Augusta University computer science students gathered at The Garage at the Georgia Cyber Center’s Shaffer MacCartney Building on Wednesday to learn—or brush up on—their hardware skills
The Cyber Center partnered with AU’s JAGByte Living Learning Community and Cybertronics Makers Club to coordinate a soldering workshop. Cyber Center Makerspace Specialist Luke Steel led the workshop, guiding the young participants on how to assemble a circuit on a purpose-built printed circuit board.
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“The purpose of that program is really to introduce them early on to the career field,” said Wennie Squires, the center’s Cyber Career Success Coordinator, about the JAGByte Community, whose students are all freshmen majoring in fields such as computer science and cyber security engineering. “We want to give them hands-on experience in order to help them understand what it’s like to actually use their degrees in the real world.”
The Cyber Center provided students with special kits, alongside safety glasses, with which they practiced through-hole soldering techniques to eventually construct simple light-up keychains. Though the workshop was focused on soldering, it emphasized skills in assembly and component identification. A major aspect of the workshop, for example, was learning how to distinguish between the positive and negative side of a light-emitting diode, or LED.
“That skill follows you, especially when you’re doing any type of customer electronics work,” said Steel. “Just knowing what’s positive and what’s negative is super important because it can completely wreck your whole project.”
For Steel, all computing is hardware, essentially, because a computer is basically a “rock we’ve tricked into thinking.” Providing this tactile experience is paramount for a well-rounded knowledge of computer sciences, as it entails developing skills related to the physical components of the sort of devices the future cyber experts would be working on.
“Having these skills, knowing that you can fix the stuff that you bought to run all these digital programs is super important,” said Steel, noting that participants could potentially, alongside knowing how to code, could potentially know also how to do basic hardware modification or repair. “That’s a huge value added for any employer who’s looking at resumes. They see every kid who’s got a CS degree and knows Python and C#. Just having another hard skill in their tool belt is huge.”
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Josh Alley, an Augusta University freshman majoring in Cyber Security, already has some intermediate experience in soldering, and echoes Steel’s emphasis on the importance of understanding hardware as part of an overall cyber-oriented skill set.
“With tools you find on the internet, you can get custom [printed circuit] boards, like we have here,” Alley said, offering an illustration of how hardware skills may be applied. “You can make your own tracking device, to track people going in and out. If you want to make this device, you got to solder it together, so it will help to help your company protect what you’re protecting.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
