Computer Science education research shows that students have a very limited and skewed view of what the computer science profession entails. It revealed that students were acquiring the "geek mythology" from the computer cluster culture, where the behavior of super hackers became the dominant image of what it takes to be a computer scientist.

We created the Technology Consulting in the Community course in 1998 in direct response to this research. Since then we have worked with over 180 organizations through 200 partnerships. (Click here for list of past partners). There were several reasons we developed this unique course.

• Students were not getting the perspective that computer science is a mix of theory, engineering, and people. Unlike some disciplines, computer science has not splintered theory, engineering and human factors. Technology Consulting in the Community was created to give students a chance to experience the rich set of issues they will deal with professionally. The course de-emphasizes coding, asking the student instead to analyze complex situations and structure unstructured problems. It asks students to analyze the relationships between technology and people, work functions, organizational structure and the purposes around which structures are organized. By working with the leaders of organizations, students have the perfect vantage point from which to see these connections and can identify ways in which technical capacity can be expanded that enable the organization to realize its mission.
• The course also addresses an important need in the community. Small community-based organizations have yet to understand how information technology fits into their operations and programs, and rarely do they budget adequately to meet basic technical support needs. If the course were to just provide one semester of technical support, little would change. That is why the course's primary mission is to raise the technical capacity of the organization. By nurturing the organization's internal ability to maintain, operate, and plan for its use of technology, systemic change begins.
• The course also works from an underlying assumption that it is good for the students to experience how their professional expertise is valuable not only in the for-profit sector, but also for non-profits. This course exposes them to organizations that serve an important function in our society, giving students the opportunity to consider career paths that are not traditional for computer scientists. As they move into their professional lives, we hope this experience predisposes students to support the work of community-based organizations with their time and money. Thus, we hope to influence good citizenship and caring beyond self-interest.

So far our plans for this course have been very successful. We have maintained close to 35 partnerships per semester. We have trained over 300 students in our consulting process and expanded their knowledge of and commitment to community partnerships. We have affected change in organizations that work with poverty, the arts, literacy, and government services.

This model has expanded to the Technology Consulting in the Global Community program, as a new course at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (starting in Spring 2008), and will be made available for other colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad to integrate into their own curriculums through a forthcoming online course repository, TechBridgeWorld's Education e-Village.