Level of impact and perspectives

Short-term impact

The Department of Computer Science will contribute to the educational profile of the Faculty of Electrotechnics, Automatics and Electronics, providing courses restructured and introduced throughout the SJEP primarily to the students of computer science. Moreover, the courses will be provided to the students of other specialties led at the Faculty, i.e. electronics, automatics, telecommunication, robotics, computer physics and others. The Department will also be equipped with two high-technology laboratories and its staff will be retrained according to the latest knowledge in the area of the project. The Faculty of Electrotechnics, Automatics and Electronics will offer a new degree: a BSc in Computer Science and an updated MSc curriculum in computer science. The proposed SJEP will fit perfectly in a development and restructuring of the University of Mining and Metallurgy's educational profile towards high technologies and three-level teaching system.

Long-term impact

The Department of Computer Science will possess a core set of technologies enabling future development of educational facilities and a set of established links with educational partners from EC universities and enterprises, allowing efficient tracking changes of technology. The Faculty of Electrotechnics, Automatics and Electronics will possess a methodology of transformation of education in high technologies, allowing departments other than Computer Science to evolve in the same manner. The University of Mining and Metallurgy will strengthen its leading position among the Polish technical universities, providing its students with the most advanced networking education in the country. The nation-wide impact will manifest itself as a new generation of IT engineers, skilled enough to fulfill the growing needs of industrial and administration institutions in the area of large-scale, complex informationsystems.

Dissemination

The following ways of project information dissemination are foreseen:

A World Wide Web server (WWW), as the most popular electronic information retrieving interface nowadays, covering the project's activities and description of the courses provided (syllabuses, assessments and lecture notes).
A ftp server for the above mentioned information.
Seminars for the interested educational institutions from Poland and possibly from the other Eastern and Central European Countries. The appropriate Calls For Participation will be prepared and distributed by regular and electronic mail.
Presentation of the results at the annual meetings and conferences, such as (in Poland): PolMAN, National Computer Networks Seminar, PTI Annual School, and others, organized by organizations including Polish Information Processing Society (PTI), Polish Electrical Engineering Society (SEP), Polish Business Foundation Group, and others. These seminars group together participants from industry and academia, allowing for fruitful information interchange.
Presentation of the results in the appropriate periodicals (``Informatyka'', ``Computer World'', ``UNIX Forum'', ``NET Forum'')

Perspectives for continuity

The TEMPUS funding will cover establishment of new courses and restructuring of the existing ones. Those courses will be led at the Faculty of Electrotechnics, Automatics and Electronics at the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Cracow, and the University will assure future maintenance of the education in those courses. The same applies to the equipment acquired as well as teaching materials. Funds for the maintenance will come from the UMM's budget. The continuing education courses will be supported partially by the UMM. The UMM will provide the equipped laboratories and teaching rooms as well as consumables, administration costs as well as access to library and academic computer network. The fees for the courses will be introduced to cover the costs of teaching staff.

Links with enterprises

Various links with Polish and EC enterprises will be held during the project to accomplish its goals successfully. The Polish industrial cooperators will help in definition of the preferred engineer's profile, organize practical placements for students and prepare seminars of experienced industrial employees for students and academic staff. Solidex Ltd., a Cracow-based network integration company expressed their will to cooperate in the project activities in writing, however, assistance of other Polish enterprises and agencies is also expected, including Cuprum 2000 Ltd. (Wroc l{}aw) -- a IT company serving the Polish copper mining sector, Procom Ltd. (Gdynia) -- a IT company, coal mining industry, health care institutions of Cracow and local government institutions of Cracow. The EC industrial cooperators will provide the latest technical knowledge for the needs of the project and practical placements for the teaching staff. The following enterprises and institutions from EC will participate and cooperate in the project activities: MARI Computer Systems Ltd. (Gateshead, UK), Olivetti Research Ltd. (Cambridge, UK), IONA Technologies Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland). Those links will be maintained after the period of the project, to enable continuous evolution of the education process, according to the changing requirements of industry.