Nova Southeastern University

Hey Everyone,

I never said Nova was a disgrace or awful program. I think everyone here is being overly sensitive and are inserting words where none existed. I'm merely stating that NSU has some areas of improvement which many of you seem to very quickly and emotionally disagree. That's too bad! By-the-way Ike, I have browsed these dissertations and they have much to be desired. I hope yours is better. I look forward to reading it!

Owl, Ph.D. (NSU 2001)

 

One interesting problem in the list whose link was posted is the lack of any clarification of what the Ph.D. is in.

Take for example our very own John Wetsch

"Assessing the practice of system administration in US federal district courts"


Is this CS? CIS? C. tech. in Education? Information Science? Information Systems?

Without knowing the field, I for one have no way of assessing whether the title likely represents a significant piece of work or not. Does anyone have a similar set of lists for, say, just the CS program or broken down by program?

-me

ps. My PhD (since I assume it will be asked) is in CS but not from Nova

 

Owl,

I think one of your first statements set the tone for this discussion on 11/25 you said:

"If you want a Nova degree in the hopes that it gets you a job in a field in which university degrees are considered particularly important (i.e. Full-Time Faculty in a Tier 1 or Tier 2 school or Fellow status in a research group at any High-Tech or Bio-Tech company) forget it! Suck it up and get into the best school you can and forget about Nova!"

This hardly comes across as giving constructive criticism for improvement.

Nuff said,

John

 

There is no such list but if you browse any copy submitted to UMI, you will see the field of study. UMI allowes you to download and browse the first 20 pages of a dissertation.
Dr. Weltch recieved his Ph.D. in Information Systems (IS). CS dissertations are generally very technical and CTE and Information Science (ISC) dissertations are generally less technical.

 

Owl:
Which of the dissertations in the list is yours? Are you Masood?

 

I assumed that John's PhD was in CTE or IS. Many of the dissertations in the list are clearly education dissertations (ex. "possible futures, the role of technology in education") while others are clearly CS (ex "structural design of a fast convergance algorithm: a semi-universal routing protocol"*). The mix seems to have very few CS degrees in it, however, unless the range of what is passing as CS is a bit wider that used at most schools.

I would posit that the fact that NSU is a very Education oriented school (ie. in the SCIS I see lots of CTE dissertations) hurts NSU's reputation as departments of education are thought by many academics to grant degrees requiring less academic rigour than most other degrees.

-me


*Dr. Leitner, who is an NSU grad and a faculty member at Drexel, seems to have advised a large number of the degrees that seem to be in CS.

 

...I would posit that the fact that NSU is a very Education oriented school (ie. in the SCIS I see lots of CTE dissertations) hurts NSU's reputation as departments of education are thought by many academics to grant degrees requiring less academic rigour than most other degrees.

-me

Gerstl,

I think you are getting the gist of things. This issue has been the source of much internal (constructive) criticism.

Owl

 

Originally posted by Gerstl:
I assumed that John's PhD was in CTE or IS. Many of the dissertations in the list are clearly education dissertations (ex. "possible futures, the role of technology in education") while others are clearly CS (ex "structural design of a fast convergance algorithm: a semi-universal routing protocol"*). The mix seems to have very few CS degrees in it, however, unless the range of what is passing as CS is a bit wider that used at most schools.


CS students are less than 10% of SCIS doctoral students population, and correspondingly, CS dissertations are less than 10% of all SCIS dissertations as should be expected. Majority of SCIS students are in CTE and ISC.


I would posit that the fact that NSU is a very Education oriented school (ie. in the SCIS I see lots of CTE dissertations) hurts NSU's reputation as departments of education are thought by many academics to grant degrees requiring less academic rigour than most other degrees.


No comment but who knows?


*Dr. Leitner, who is an NSU grad and a faculty member at Drexel, seems to have advised a large number of the degrees that seem to be in CS.



That's correct. Dr. Leitner chairs mostly CS dissertations.

 

Gerstl's position (good point) was never the basis of your argument.

 

That's not exactly what you have been saying:

You have been asked some specific questions, Owl. I would appreciate it if you would answer them.

1. What was the field of the Ph.D. that you are claiming?

2. Why in the world did you choose to study at a school you dislike so much?

3. Do your criticisms apply to all of Nova, including its Pharm.D., D.O., D.M.D., J.D., Ed.D., Au.D., Dr.O.T., D.B.A. and other professional programs? Or do they only apply to the handful of Ph.D. programs that Nova offers?

4. Do your criticisms apply to all of those Nova Ph.D. programs, or only to your own department, whatever that was?

If you are really interested in saying something substantial about Nova, and if you think that you are being misunderstood, you would probably do well to cut out the hyperbole and try to state your position clearly and precisely.

 

Gerstl's position (good point) was never the basis of your argument.

 

My Ph.D. was in Information Systems. Back when I started at Nova ('91) it was just Nova and not NSU. A Ph.D. was not offered by the department, rather the degree was the Sc.D. (prior to the Sc.D. the D.A. was the degree awarded). In addition, the CS degree did not have the DL component it has today. If you wanted to earn the CS degree you needed to come to campus. Information Systems, Information Science, and the Education Tech. doctorates were what were available through a combination of short residency and DL. The CS degree was the most technical of the programs followed by the Information Systems degree.

My last year ('94) in the program a lot of changes happened. NSU was formed and CCIS (Center for Computer and Information Science was the original name which was later changed to School for SCIS). NSU also offered the Ph.D. in the department for the 1st time. As we were completing our dissertations we were given a choice of graduating with the Sc.D. or the Ph.D. In that same year the CIS program came into being. The IS students were asked if they wanted to switch over. I declined as I was already working on my dissertation and didn't want to add an additional year of course work. The IS curriculum at the time included:

Sys Analysis & Expert Systems
AI & Expert Systems
Strategic Management for Info Sys.
Computer Related Management Applications
Emerging Technology in Information Systems
Human Factors in Software Design
Design of the Human Interface
Computer Based Research & Statistics
Data Analysis for Information Systems
Policy Formulation in MIS
Database Management Systems
Relational Databases in Organizations

In addition to coursework the first two years also included the completion of two practicum proposals and two practicums.

When all of this was done we went on to the dissertation proposal and eventual dissertation stage.

Fun stuff!

A more recent note from the 11/30/01 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. NSU ranked #9 in the listing of Institutions awarding the most doctorates in the year 2000. Using the US News ranking it is surrounded by Tier I schools. #1 was UC, Berkeley with 751 doctorates and #2 was U Wisc. - Madison at 728. NSU awarded 590 doctorates. #8 was U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champ. at 600. #10 and #11 were respectively Stanford (567) and Harvard (547).

John

 

I should have said "is in" instead of "was in." I think I still have my Ph.D..

 

Just another editing fix -- sorry for the fat finger in submitting my last 'long' post too early. I stated --

"NSU was formed and CCIS (Center for Computer and Information Science was the original name which was later changed to School for SCIS)."

I meant to write:

"NSU was formed and CCIS (Center for Computer and Information Science) was the original name which was later changed to School for SCIS."

John

 

What did you find?

Owl, Ph.D. (NSU 2001)

 

Back in the early 90's Dr. Harvey Deitel was the kahuna of choice for the CS degree. He had a published textbook on operating systems which was a standard at many colleges and institutions. He is also well known for his books on programming titled "C How to Program" and "C++ How to Program."

John

 

In addition,

Dr. Deitel has been a staunch supporter of NSU's SCIS program. Deitel & Associates have at least 11 well respected programming books to their credit. I believe he and the current Dean go back a ways.

Question for drwetsch, is it true that Dr. Lieblein (SCIS's Dean) invented Ada? I never asked him myself by others have and those people claim he did.

Owl, Ph.D. (NSU 2001)

 

In addition, Dr Laszlo (Ph.D., Princeton in CS), who is currently a full time provessor at SCIS is an authority in Computer Graphics. He has written and published three books that are widely used by CS students. The books are as follows: (1) Computational Geometry and Computer Graphics in C++, (2) The Schemers Guide to Solid Modeling and (3) Object-Oriented Programming Featuring Graphical Applications in Java.
One of Dr. Deitel's books is the required textbook for a graduate course that I am currently teaching at University in NJ. Although Dr. Deitel who received his Ph.D. in CS from MIT is no longer with Nova, his presence is still very much felt at SCIS because his books are used to teach programming languages to both undergraduate and graduate students at SCIS.

 

He was a key contributor to the DoD Software Initiative that brought about Ada. He is referenced in several ACM Communications in providing status updates of the Initiative. He is also cited in various articles on Ada including a CMU SEI Technical Report on Ada. Yes, you could put him in the Ada founder category.

John

 

So, you are now saying that Nova is after all not that bad?