Erich Izdepski

Erich Izdepski

Location: falls church, va

About me

Erich Izdepski is currently working as an Adjunct Professor for WUST, in the Information Technology Department. That is to say, he is semi-retired and enjoying life! His last full-time position was as the Senior VP of R&D at BTS Software Solutions. A former Naval Officer and nuclear engineer, he has held senior leadership and software technical management and development positions in four start-ups. He has over 24 years of software engineering experience. He was a Principal Investigator on a BARDA project and was a Principal Investigator on three past DARPA projects. These projects spanned over 5 years and focused on cloud-based data collection, management, analysis, and sharing. He served as the designer and cloud architect of these systems and leads the development team. His software skills cover the Python, Java, SQL, Javascript languages, n-tier web application design, linux/unix/os x/windows application development, DevSecOps, and agile methods. He is a named Inventor on 18 patents and holds a BS from UCLA in the Mathematics of Computation and an MS from Johns Hopkins University in Information Systems and Technology.

Interests

computers and music

Skills

software engineering and architecture, cloud computing, mobile computing, telecommunications, webapp development, nuclear engineering, etc.

Activity

I'm teaching courses aimed at helping students get the fundamentals need for earning the Comptia A+ and Network certifications. A year ago I started a computer lab to give them hands-on experience building, troubleshooting, installing an OS, setting up networks, etc. I did this on the cheap, buying 20 year old computers off facebook and getting several donated for free, then buying some toolkits for working on them. Can't go wrong with cheap computers and if something gets broken, which happens, it is no big deal. Buy some parts off ebay and you have work for the next class fixing… >>>

Blend episodic (events) and semantic (words) memory to aid in retention. More lab time, more group work, less lecturing. Everything I teach is already online somewhere.

Ways to enhance memory. Give application tips, illustrations, work in groups, work sheets, hands on work- multiple ways to learn and to enable recalling material more easily.

Have you ever worked with a group of people trying to solve a problem? There are different opinions, different considerations, and each person’s perspective provides a different angle on the problem.

Ultimately, you must decide a course of action. There’s no right answer, but you have to confront the complexities of the choice you make. What if that room was filled with people from diverse industries, functions, countries, and backgrounds? All trying to analyze a problem and make a decision? Every day? That is what the case method at Harvard Business School (HBS) prepares you to do.

Celebrate and recognize success. Provide positive feedback- add a positive spin to assignment feedback especially when the work isn't great. Preserve student motivation. Show how the coursework applies to future professional endeavors.

I don’t think I provide enough encouragement (vital for motivation and retention) so I need to find ways to build that into the course, both for online weeks and in-person weeks. 

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