Office of University Communications
Service-learning team creates software for USDA
Date: July 18, 2007
Contact: Elizabeth Carmichael Burton
(417) 836-5774
The students created the program as part of a service-learning component of CSC 450 Introduction to Software Engineering. The program, called PhotoStore, was nationally certified in June 2007 and has been released to NRCS offices for field use.
Vollmar and the students met with Steve Hefner, team leader of the USDA-NRCS South Missouri Water Quality Project, to discuss solutions for photo storage needs. Using the guidance of NRCS staff, the team then developed an organizational software which allows users to add or delete images, provide file names, descriptions, and key words for each image, and search through a feature that provides thumbnail images based on search criteria provided by the user.
“Many vendors do not meet the standards of customer service demonstrated by the PhotoStore Team,” said Frank Hoeppel of the End User Computing CM Team for the USDA Interoperability Lab. “That this project was a volunteer effort makes the level of performance even more impressive.”
Elizabeth Carmichael Burton, director of Citizenship and Service Learning (CASL) for Missouri State, said the university’s partnership with the USDA began when a service-learning team for an early childhood class wrote water quality curriculum for the agency. Vollmar and USDA representatives met at a faculty and community partner luncheon hosted by CASL.
“CASL works to match community needs with the academic objectives of service-learning courses,” said Carmichael Burton. “The annual luncheon is a time for faculty and community partners to gather and discuss ways they can work together to accomplish the goal of learning within the context of civic engagement.”
For more information, contact Carmichael Burton at 836-5774.