PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES UPDATE

Name:     James S. Jones                         Date:  September 22, 1998
Division: Science and Math Division


I.   Teaching Innovations (course development, revisions, instructional 
     strategies implemented, use of technology, etc.)

     Continued to upgrade and maintain course related web pages and refined 
     use of class email-lists for instruction. Much maintenance effort is
     needed to keep these things current and in place.

     Taught JAVA for the first time in a winterterm format, to prepare
     for offering it as a regular course.

     Established "Introduction to Unix" as a hands-on course offered both
     semesters that would appeal to several populations of students: 
     computer science and engineering, info. technology, and general ed.


II.  Service Provided

     A. Professional Service

        Faculty advisor to 10-15 students
        Inform students of (and post) the many e-mail job notices I receive
        Meet with prospective students at the request of Admissions
        Assisted various faculty with computer questions throughout year
        Pretest and suggest solutions to network or computer
           problems to system administrator(s) to favor academic needs
        Assisted Gary Hasman in major overhaul of the Computer Science Lab 
           (hardware, software, and administrative efforts)

     B. College Committees and Assignments

        Member- Academic Information Services Steering Committee (AISSC)
        Member- General Education Subcommittee on Info Tech (GETEC)
        Member- Ad-hoc committee for creation of new IT major
        Participated in search committee for new IT faculty
        Participated in search committee for ITS Director
        

III. Presentations (title, organization, date)

     none

IV.  Publications (bibliographic data)

     Rus and Jones, "PHRASE Parsers from Multi-Axiom Grammars". 
     Theoretical Computer Science 199 (1998), pp 199-229. 
     Elsevier Science B.V.


V.   Grant Writing 

     none


VI.  Courses/Workshops/Conferences attended (title, organization, date, place)

     "Windows NT", two-day CompuMaster seminar in K.C., Mo. August 1998.

     "Networking", University of Central Oklahoma in participation
     with NCEI (National Computer Educator's Institute), August 1998. 
     Grade (4 semester graduate hours): A.


VII. Professional Memberships

     Association for Computing Machinery (ACM, Comp.Sci. Prof. Society)
     ACM Special Interest Group for Programming Languages (SIGPLAN)
     Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges
     Subscribe to numerous newsletters and journals for CSc, CEngr, IT, 
        and teaching (both conventional and electronic).


VIII. Other (community service, church, etc.)

      Assistant Scoutmaster for Lamoni Troop 116
      Sunday School Teacher for Sr. Hi. class
      Hosted two foreign exchange 11th grade students
          Sept-Dec - boy from Madrid, Spain (he returned to attend Spec'98)
          Jan-July - girl from Berlin, Germany 


IX.  Professional Objectives for 1998-99

     Develop proficiency in Java.

     Learn PERL scripting language and basics of CGI programming.

     Update myself on programming languages fundamental and update the course.

     Take an NCEI (Nat'l Computer Educator's Institute) course if feasible.

     On-going: make time to practice tools/methods used in our courses
     and which are ever changing and subject to misuse and error.


X.  Status of professional objectives identified last year for 1997-98

    a. Develop proficiency in Java and develop a course in Java. 
    
    --Not as much as I hoped. No time available to develop Java expertise 
      beyond the basics for a winterterm offering. The result will be
      difficulty in teaching it in Spring 1999 as a 300-level course.

    b. To refine the "Introduction To Unix" course to become a standard 
       entry-level course for CS majors.
    
    --Done, but continued refinement needed. A new textbook was chosen.

    c. Take a more intensive course on Windows 95 (incl. system internals).
    
    --Instead of Windows 95, Windows NT was identified as being more
      important, so intesive study of Windows NT was done in August 1998
      through graded NCEI and ungraded CompuMaster courses.

    d. Take an NCEI (Nat'l Computer Educator's Institute) course if feasible.
    
    --Done in August 1998 (Networking using Windows NT)

    e. Make time to practice using the tools/methods being taught and used
       in our current courses. 
       
    --Somewhat, but since the change is on-going, this objective is also
      on-going.