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don_ginocchio
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On Wednesday November 19th Leah Gallagher and I had the pleasure of visiting two classes at the University of Notre Dame to connect with students and discuss SAP topics. 

The first class was for senior Computer Science & Engineering students and is entitled “Software Engineering”.  Its description in the Notre Dame course
catalog is as follows:

  • Software engineering is an engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of producing high-quality, cost-effective, and maintainable software systems. This course provides an introduction to the most important tasks of a software engineer: requirements engineering, software design, implementation and testing, documentation, and project management. A medium-scale design project combined with individual assignments complement the lectures.

Because of the themes for this course, we presented an overview of SAP and our business, key challenges related to Big Data, how we use Design Thinking in our software development, and tips on experimenting with SAP technology.  Leah shared a demonstration of her recent SAP Predictive Analytics class project as well as two other SAP software examples to encourage further learning by the students.  Because the students in this class are Computer Science majors, we encouraged them to consider participating in SAP contests, code jams, the upcoming State of Indiana Civic Hack-a-thon and our planned SAP Innojam around the Hana Cloud Platform.

Our next stop was at the IT Management Applications Course which all Sophomores in the Mendoza College of Business must complete.  Its description in the Notre Dame course catalog is as follows:

  • This course will provide an introduction to the world of Information Technology Management. Students will attain a general understanding of opportunities and challenges in IT Management. This understanding will be achieved through online research and discussion of IT Management issues and business processes as well as hands-on use of common IT application tools. Microsoft Excel will be used to structure and solve general business problems, analyze what-if scenarios and solve complex business optimization problems while Microsoft Access will be used to introduce students to database concepts and structure. In addition, students will research and use an online website development tool in order to create a personal website. The capstone project for the course will involve working with team members to integrate acquired knowledge of IT applications in order to solve a complex business problem.

The students were introduced to the SAP ERP Simulation which will be used to illustrate ERP concepts over two lectures in the course.  We were there to observe and help explain SAP technology and the general concepts of the simulation game.

I want to express my appreciation to both Andrei Grigoriev of SAP Ireland and Michael Brown of SAP Palo Alto who provided some of the presentation material we used in the Software Engineering class.  The students where very engaged in the discussion.