Students gain valuable experience in software applications for cloud environments

JULY 22, 2021 — The Department of Computer Science in the UTSA College of Sciences has created a partnership with the National Upcycled Computing Collective Inc. (NUCC) to provide the hardware necessary to build and maintain a Kubernetes cluster, a computing tool that runs virtual operating systems. The resources will be made available to students enrolled in upper-level software engineering courses and web technologies and to selected faculty, further enabling workforce preparation at the university.

UTSA students will gain valuable experience using Docker and Kubernetes, two powerful technologies that are rapidly becoming an industry standard. The knowledge and practice with these two in-demand technologies will give UTSA computer science students a competitive advantage as they begin their careers in cloud environments.

“We will be one of the few institutions in the country to provide this type of technology and training to our students in the classroom.”

“This is a huge boost for software engineering at UTSA,” said Mark Robinson, assistant professor of practice in computer science. “We will be one of the few institutions in the country to provide this type of technology and training to our students in the classroom. The value for our students as software developers and their future employers will be immense.”

With the Kubernetes cluster, students will be able to deploy containerized projects, applications and systems. When coupled with the supervision and course curriculum provided by UTSA faculty, they will also learn how to use these game-changing tools to build and execute an effective software development and operations pipeline.

Container software, such as Docker, provides cloud environments for containerized applications to run with a variety of features, including storage, automation and management. By isolating applications from the surrounding environment, containers and container software provide greater flexibility for workloads in data centers. Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that was released in 2013 and designed by Google. It integrates with other container management systems.

The NUCC is a nonprofit organization based in Fullerton, California. It facilitates environments for computer science, engineering and security researchers while providing donated hardware to schools and institutions to augment educational capabilities.

“NUCC is pleased to begin our partnership with UTSA by providing hardware useful to the students and faculty,” said Andrew Sneed ’20, director of civil operations at NUCC.  “We look forward to seeing the growth of knowledge among students built on upcycled hardware.”

The collaboration between NUCC and UTSA is just one example of the commitment between UTSA and industry partners, a partnership that is also strengthening the UTSA community research into artificial intelligence, usability and defense. Research centers and outreach programs provide UTSA students and faculty with additional opportunities to explore the various facets of software engineering—a high-demand and ever-changing field.

San Antonio is among the nation’s largest cybersecurity hubs and home to the largest concentration of cybersecurity experts and industry leaders outside Washington, D.C., uniquely positioning the city and UTSA to lead the nation in cybersecurity research and workforce development together.

— Milady Nazir