Cathy Kennedy

Developer of CSM’s Networking Technology Lab and associated curriculum
1998 U.S. Community College Professor of the Year

Computing changed dramatically in the 1990s as networked PCs and Internet access raised the knowledge requirements of aspiring networking technicians. CSM Computer Science Professor Cathy Kennedy brought these advances home by launching the college’s Networking Technology Lab in 1995 and with it the curricula to train network engineers and certified technicians in fast-growing specialties. Her students linked thousands of computer users to the Internet and to each other, both in the well-paid jobs for which CSM prepared them and as volunteers in local schools.

For these and other strengths, the Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Education named Kennedy its 1998 U.S. Community College Professor of the Year.

“I came from industry to be a teacher because people I knew suggested it,” Kennedy says. “I worked with a lot of programmers who had brand-new university degrees, but they did not always understand the practical needs of users.”

Kennedy’s neighbor Joan Bell worked in CSM’s evening program and mentioned a need for a part-time computer science instructor. Kennedy jumped at the chance. When a full-time job opened a couple of years later, she applied and got it. Along the way, she developed CSM’s first remote course taught entirely online. In those days, students and teachers patiently exchanged data at a glacial pace through telephone landlines connected to modems that resembled plunger-like rubber cups attached to the telephone handset.

“CSM had an advisory committee of 8–10 of the largest employers in the community who needed computer specialists,” Kennedy says. “They didn’t necessarily need computer scientists, or people with 4-year degrees, but they needed well-trained programming and networking professionals.”

Kennedy began by taking Novell courses herself to become a certified network engineer. Lacking equipment, the first networking courses she taught at CSM had to be lecture-only.

“Imagine learning how to network computers when all you have is your own computer that isn’t connected to anything,” Kennedy says.

“An instruction might say, ‘Connect Plug A to Socket B,’ but you didn’t have a chance to handle actual plugs, sockets or cables. In the real world, a myriad of unexpected things can go wrong. Having your hands on the actual equipment you will encounter on the job really makes a difference.”

As a member of the Bay Area’s Network Professionals Association (NPA), Kennedy learned that the association was looking for a local company that would donate space to house a new NPA training facility. “I said, ‘If I find the place, can you find the stuff?’”

CSM’s Frank Vaskelis and college President Peter Landsberger allotted Kennedy a building full of old kitchen equipment, possibly relics from a home economics program. Tech firms including Novell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and IBM donated more than $100,000 in equipment.

CSM’s Networking Technology Lab opened October 25, 1995 and was heralded as a co-operation between the community, the college and the business world. Over the years, NPA members continued to donate their time to meet frequently with CSM students and to mentor and hire them.