May 22, 2000
Silicon Valley engineer earns a master's degree in computer engineering from UCSC--without commuting
By Tim Stephens
When Steve Canby receives his master's degree during graduation ceremonies at UC
Santa Cruz on Friday, June 9, it will be one of the few times he has set foot on
the UCSC campus. Yet most of the courses he took over the past three years to earn
his degree were taught at UCSC. How did he do it? Welcome to the brave new world
of distance learning.
Canby is the first graduate of an innovative master's degree program in computer
engineering with specialization in network engineering, offered jointly by UCSC's
Jack Baskin School of Engineering and UCSC Extension.
All of the courses required for the degree are offered in Santa Clara Valley through
UCSC Extension. A pair of high-tech classrooms, one at UCSC and another at the Extension
facilities in Cupertino, enable a professor at one site to teach two classrooms of
students 25 miles apart simultaneously.
"Most of the classes were taught from Santa Cruz and beamed over the hill,"
Canby said. "It started off feeling kind of funny because there's a TV camera
on you, but after a couple of weeks you start interacting with the professor and
you forget that you're not in the same room."
About 60 other students are currently enrolled in the program, which was created
to meet the needs of working engineers and other technical professionals in Silicon
Valley. For Canby, who lives in San Jose and works in Santa Clara, the convenience
of the program was crucial, enabling him to earn an advanced degree while continuing
to work as a computer programmer at Gibbons and Associates, the software engineering
firm where he has worked for the past 12 years.
"This program worked well because it was designed for people who are working
in Silicon Valley," Canby said. "I had thought about graduate school before,
but the commute to the closest UC campuses, Berkeley and Santa Cruz, would be too
much for me, and Stanford is too expensive."
UCSC and UCSC Extension began offering the specialized master's program in fall 1997
in response to the rapidly growing demand for people with network engineering skills.
"Silicon Valley is the home of many of the world's leading networking companies,
and there is a great demand for highly trained specialists to design, develop, and
support leading-edge network products and services," said Patrick Mantey, dean
of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering.
Canby said many of the courses he took were directly related to his current work.
"It was clear they would help me immensely in my job," he said. "One
of the requirements, a network design project, involved actually implementing a network
protocol, and that was 100 percent applicable to my work."
Not surprisingly, there were times when Canby felt challenged by the competing demands
of course work, job, and family life. He and his wife, a financial analyst in Silicon
Valley, have a four-year-old daughter. But the program did a good job of meeting
his needs, both professionally and personally, he said.
UCSC Extension is the largest provider of professional education in Silicon Valley
and on the Central Coast, serving more than 50,000 students annually. With facilities
in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Milpitas, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, UCSC Extension
offers 3,000 courses each year in a wide range of continuing education programs for
professional development and personal growth.
A course catalog and additional information about UCSC Extension are available online
at www.ucsc-extension.edu.
