When you’re the first comprehensive nonprofit private university founded in Pennsylvania in more than a century, innovation is in your DNA.
Since welcoming our first class, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology has emerged as a hub of education, training and industry partnerships surpassed by none.
A young, nimble institution with an unflinching entrepreneurial spirit, Harrisburg University prides itself on ground-breaking research.
With resources like our Presidential Research Grant, HU professors engage students in projects that touch and change lives.
Computer Science Professor Daqing Yun:
“With this fund, I have been able to engage HU students in cutting-edge research in high-performance computer networking fields,” said Yun, who was awarded a $20,000 Presidential Research Grant to launch an Advance Bandwidth Scheduling in High-Performance Networks Project with students in November of 2016.
Yun partnered with Professor Majid Shaalan to engage four undergraduates in the computer networking project that has provided students with an opportunity to help formulate problems, conduct performance evaluations, review associated literature and work collaboratively toward a common solution.
“Our goal in this project is to develop efficient strategies for big data transfer in high-performance networks,” Yun said. “Students will have opportunities to practice their communication skills and collaborative computer programming skills. And the potential publications and conference attendance from this could catapult HU’s name recognition further.”
Sociology of Emerging Technologies Professor John McKnight and Librarian David Runyon:
Professor John McKnight and Librarian David Runyon used a $20,000 Presidential Research Grant award to co-develop a role-playing educational course titled “Simulating Global Crises.”
Introduced as a general education class in January, students enrolled in the course spent the spring semester collaborating to confront a humanitarian crisis. The course is centered around what is essentially a board game Runyon and McKnight developed with help from futurist and systems designer Michael Burnam-Fink, PhD, Arizona State University, and Alisa Schreibman, author and CTO of an ebook publishing company.
“We wanted students to learn teamwork and systems, and there really isn’t anything like this being done. I wanted students to have the experience of acting like a professional in the moment,” McKnight said. “Most of the students told us it was their favorite course.”
Students will have the opportunity to enroll in Simulating Global Crises, also dubbed SimGlobal, each spring, thanks to the Presidential Research Grant, McKnight said. McKnight and Runyon hope to develop SimGlobal into a kit for other schools to harness.
“David and I are good, but we didn’t have the resources in house to bring in design experts,” McKnight said. “We couldn’t have done it without the funding.”
Keep an eye out for more on the innovative education at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology.
