Testing Tech Skills

ECU students present capstone projects that support the region

For East Carolina University senior K.J. Davis, learning the skills he needs to work in information and cybersecurity technology is just the beginning. Putting those skills to use in a real work environment while still in college is just as important.

Davis was among more than 50 ECU information and cybersecurity technology (ICT) seniors who highlighted their work during capstone presentations at the Main Campus Student Center.

“It helped me implement what I learned in the classroom and actually see it in the real world. That helped me a lot,” said Davis, who wants to work as a network engineer. “Some things that I had some gray areas about in the past, by actively working with it, I learned a lot more from hands-on working in the actual field.”

Dr. Charles Lesko, information and cybersecurity technology professor and senior capstone course coordinator, speaks during ICT capstone project presentations.

The students presented their projects in front of faculty, staff, fellow students and ICT industry advisory board members.

“This is my favorite time of the year,” Dr. Tijjani (TJ) Mohammed, chair of the Department of Technology Systems, said in his opening remarks. “I get to see all of these great projects you’ve been working on.”

Dr. Charles Lesko, ICT professor and senior capstone course coordinator, said the capstone projects are designed to help students test their skills and experience project management, something they’ll do during their careers.

“The idea is to give them some real-world context in that area,” he said. “It’s two phases: One is all the work, the tasks, the effort in doing the project. The other is project management where you have to manage the tasks. … That’s what this is really all about, giving them a chance to take the concept of IT and put it into the context of a team project.”

Davis, from Hampton, Virginia, said that teamwork was valuable for him as he worked with Caleb Frett, Thomas Crutchfield, Casey Adarkwah, David Bailey and Zachary Braxton to provide networking and cybersecurity at the Building Hope Community Life Center, a youth support organization in Greenville.

“This project helped me work with a team and work with everyone’s schedules,” he said. “We’re all college students with different schedules. We all had to work with our strengths and work with our weaknesses, but in the end, it taught us how to come together and finish the project in an efficient way.”

Davis said the team worked to solve Wi-Fi dead zones in the building through the installation of network devices and then made sure the network was safe from external attacks as well as for internal users.

“We made sure social media couldn’t be downloaded on their iPads,” he said. “We also changed some settings on their servers to make sure the kids couldn’t access certain websites.”

He said he enjoyed working on the project — though he joked about one aspect of it.

“Updating all the iPads definitely wasn’t the fun part,” he said. “We had to manually do all 20 iPads and five admin iPads, so that took some time. It took a good three hours out of a Saturday to do that.”

Still, he takes pleasure in knowing the work of the team helped a nonprofit group improve its support of children.

“I just wanted to help out the best way we could,” Davis said. “I feel like it’s better that we helped a small nonprofit because if we would not have done it, probably no one would have done it, or if it was going to be fixed, it would have taken them years and years. We were able to go ahead and do it and donate some network devices. They don’t have a designated IT person, so we helped them out a lot.”

Student Jaelen Jackson answers questions about a smart agricultural greenhouse project.

Jaelen Jackson and the team of Shane Davis, Hoby Evans and Jarobi Clark worked with a small business called R!OT in Wilson to set up a smart agricultural greenhouse. The team used Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to collect data such as temperature and humidity at various heights and locations in the greenhouse. The data is analyzed to provide instant feedback to allow adjustments that will produce optimum growing conditions.

“One of the fun things was just going into the greenhouse and learning all about the technology that they are going to use and all their information, the smart agriculture,” Jackson said.

He said the sensors make the collection of the data easier compared to how the information used to be gathered.

“It was an old-fashioned way. They just went in and measured things by hand,” he said. “R!OT is being intuitive by allowing us to go out there and create this project for them so we can use these smart IoT devices to get this information for them.”

Jackson, from Dumfries, Virginia, is looking for cybersecurity or networking jobs and believes the work with his capstone team helped him understand all that technology can do to support small businesses.

“This project did a great job,” he said. “The dashboard helped us with coding. We learned a lot about just understanding the business side of things and how farmers look at things. There’s a lot that you can use technology for, so you can really go into anything and expand the reach as far as you want.”

The 10 projects presented during the event supported nonprofit organizations, small businesses and small government departments. Lesko said the work is an example of ECU’s mission of outreach and service to the region.

“One thing that we’re very proud of is that we look in the region to see what we can do,” he said. “We’re out there giving back. We’re showing the region what we can do. It gives me a lot of great pride the kind of work we’re doing in the community.”

Dr. Tijjani (TJ) Mohammed, chair of the Department of Technology Systems, welcomes guests to the presentations.