| Aaron's Narrative Work History |
Aaron is an Instructor in the Department of Computer Science at Boston University, where he has been since the fall semester of 2004.
As a full-time member of the teaching faculty, Aaron focuses his interest and attention on undergraduate education. Aaron devotes most of his time and effort to teaching introductory computer programming classes (CS111 and CS108). He approaches the classes with the philosophy that any student can be successful at learning to program, given enough dedication. His apporach to teaching is that of a hands-on, example-driven, question-led discussion with students. Aaron believes that most of the learning in his courses is the depth and challange of the homework assignments. Indeed, this is the aspect which contributes the most to the students' overall learning experience, and it is that which defines a high-quality course. Thus, Aaron feels that his time spent with students, both inside and outside of the classroom, is in the role of a coach who is always supportive of students' efforts to learn; encouraging their questions; proud of their achievements; and caring about them as people, irrispective of their success or failure in the classroom.
Aaron continues to serve as a consultant to the Boston College network security and policy group. In this capacity, he develops custom software tools to provide incident detection, tracking, reporting and notification. Aaron uses contemporary tools including Linux, perl, Java, SQL, JDBC, Servlets, and JSP to perform data processing on large data sets for pattern matching, text parsing, normalization and reporting.
In addition to administering automated network scanning for vulnerabilities, Aaron has developed a web-based multiple data source reporting application. The Lookup Application provides a coordinated way to search multiple data sources (e.g. realtional databases, LDAP, syslog and text files), creating "chains" of queries which are triggered off of a single initial lookup. The program output is datasource-independent HTML, and XML-based configuration provides for ease of adding new data sources. |
 Aaron
spent the 2003-2004 academic year as an adjunct instructor in the
Mathematical Sciences department at Bentley College, teaching an
two-course sequence in introductory statistics (GB204/GB205). Aaron had the privilege of being a
graduate teaching fellow in the finance department at Boston College
for the Spring 2004 semester, teaching a basic finance class (MF021). In addition to teaching, Aaron served as a graduate assistant for Boston College's Information Technology Services, in the department of Computer Security and Policy. In this capacity, Aaron's main responsibilities were creating custom software tools to perform data conversion, tracking and reporting of security-related events. |
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In August of 2003, Aaron decided to leave corporate America and pursue his dream of being a teacher. |
 From 1999 to 2003, Aaron worked for Cisco Systems, Inc. as consulting engineer, CTI trainer, and software engineer. |
| In his
role as a senior software engineer with Cisco's Voice Technology Group
(2000 to 2003), Aaron developed telecommunications software, which
provides call routing, signaling, and control information for Cisco's
call center customers. Specific projects included developing Cisco's
Computer Telephony Integration Object Server (CTIOS), CTI application
programming interfaces, and supervisor and monitoring applications for
Cisco's Internet Protocol Contact Center (IPCC) suite of products.
Regular responsibilities included all aspects of the systems
development lifecycle: writing software functional specifications,
designing software products and interfaces, substantial C++ and Java
programming assignments, product testing, and third-level customer
support. He provided ongoing support for the Cisco CTI Desktop and
JavaClient products, including on-site support to critical customer
accounts. Finally, Aaron served as technical liaison between Cisco's
Professional Services, Technical Assistance Center, and the Development
Engineering organization.
In addition to the engineering aspects of his role, Aaron assisted with marketing of the CTIOS product, including presenting a technical seminar at Cisco's Customer Contact Business Unit's annual User Conference. The seminar was rated among the top five of the seminar. Additional marketing efforts included presentations for key customers at Cisco's Executive Briefing Center. Further, Aaron has authored, co-authored, and edited several Cisco technical books: "CTI Product Description," "CTIOS System Manager's Guide," and "CTIOS Developer's Guide." |
 Aaron
began his Cisco career at
as a professional services engineer
with GeoTel Communications Corporation.
As a professional services engineer, Aaron created and consulted on custom CTI (computer telephony integration) software solutions for referenceable customers including Fidelity Investments, UPS, and Optus Telecom (Australia), using tools including Visual C++/MFC, Visual Basic, COM/ActiveX, Java and SQL. In addition, Aaron served as adjunct faculty to the training organization, teaching an "Introduction to CTI" class and an "Advanced CTI class" for developers. This led to developing an e-learning CD-ROM version of the CTI training curriculum (2000), which is now distributed by Cisco in-lieu of classroom CTI training. |
 Aaron's
first year out of
Indiana University (1998-1999), was spent
working under the banner of Andersen
Consulting, as a member of the Network Solutions group.During that time, Aaron was introduced to the field of computer telephony integration, and helped to create a new technical architecture for American Express' customer service call centers. Specifically, Aaron worked to implement enterprise-wide post-call routing using the GeoTel Intelligent CallRouter suite of CTI products. Aaron's assignment included conducting a technical proof of concept of a real-time three-tiered client-server data access architecture to retrieve customer-specific routing attributes from mainframe data. Aaron designed and programmed GeoTel call routing scripts for rule arbitration and call distribution, and learned to integrate GeoTel call delivery with Periphonics VRU systems, Lucent ACDs, and CTI ActiveX agent desktops. |
 While a
full-time undergraduate
student at Indiana University, Aaron
worked as an intern in network design and implementation, and a
part-time system administrator for M+H Consulting, LLC.Aaron's employer, a Yale Ph.D. with 30 years of industry experience, hired him as a technical expert. His mission: to migrate his office LAN from a local thin coax TCP/IP network to a fully functional 10baseT Windows NT & TCP/IP network. (HEY - this was a big deal back in 1997!) Initial challenges included learning the basics of Linux and IBM AIX (with which Aaron had no previous experience), documenting the existing LAN and fully understand it's functionality, and researching the equipment that would be necessary to migrate the network to 10-baseT. This included network interface cards, a workgroup hub, and a thorough learning of Linux's TCP/IP and routing capabilities. After migrating the physical network, Aaron upgraded hardware on several machines, and install a Windows NT primary domain controller to serve as a file, print, and FTP server. Finally, Aaron set up Linux routing and create a system of IP addresses to bring the entire LAN (previously only a local network without valid IP addresses) onto the Internet, and configured each workstation to access email, web, and ftp services, as well as set up DNS and gateway interfaces. (Again, this was a big deal in 1997. Really.) |
 The centerpiece
of Aaron's 1997 work
experience was for Indiana University's Halls of Residence Computing,
where he served as a Computer Assistant for Wright Quad. What does this
mean? Well, for starters, understand that
Indiana University was, by 1996, fully wired with Ethernet, a
high-speed digital network,
in every on-campus housing room. This earned it a title position in
"Yahoo Internet Life" as America's most wired campus.
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During Aaron's tenure at
Indiana University, he developed an
interest in opinion writing. His goal is to be as prominent a cynic
and a critic as the legendary
Mark Twain once was, and he aspires to write for a prestigious
publication
such
as The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.
 Beginning during the summer of
1997, Aaron served as opinion
columnist for the Indiana Daily Student. The IDS,
Indiana
University's student-run newspaper, is a member of the Associated
Press,
and has won hundreds of awards for student and non-student journalism. In March of 1998, Aaron joined the IDS Editorial Board, which wrote the staff opinions and staff editorials that represent the newspaper's official opinion, and served as opinion editor. Samples of Aaron's opinion writing are on-line in his Academic Portfolio |
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| http://www.aaronstevens.net/portfolio/work.html Created by: Aaron Stevens Last updated: 11/08/2006 |