Computer Engineering Department

Statistics of COE Alumni Survey(Total Responses: 90)

T082

5= Very satisfied, 1= Very dissatisfied

Q.1: The COE program has provided me with adequate background to practice my profession as a computer engineer with confidence.

Satisfaction

Percentage

513%

448%

328%

28%

13%

Q.2: The COE program has provided me with adequate background to be globally (worldwide) competitive in my profession.

Satisfaction

Percentage

58%

443%

326%

214%

19%

Q.3: The COE program has provided me with adequate background to make intellectual contribution to my profession.

SatisfactionPercentage

517%

436%

336%

28%

13%

Q.4: The COE program has provided me with adequate training for improving my personal skills (e.g., teamwork, leadership, oral and written communication skills) in the work place.

SatisfactionPercentage

523%

427%

324%

216%

110%

Q.5: The COE program has provided me with adequate opportunities to help me understand and appreciate the importance of superior work ethics in the practice of my profession.

SatisfactionPercentage

522%

431%

334%

211%

12%

Q.6: The COE program has provided me with adequate opportunities to help me understand and appreciate the importance of a good character in the practice of my profession.

SatisfactionPercentage

521%

431%

328%

214%

16%

Q.7: The COE program has provided me with an adequate ability and motivation to continuously improve my technical skills.

SatisfactionPercentage

526%

443%

314%

28%

19%

Q.8: The COE program has provided me with adequate opportunities for professionally adapting myself to changes in my field.

SatisfactionPercentage

527%

445%

323%

23%

12%

Q.9: The COE program has provided me with adequate breadth technical programs.

SatisfactionPercentage

510%

441%

333%

29%

17%

Q.10: The COE program has provided me with adequate depth technical programs.

SatisfactionPercentage

512%

433%

333%

216%

16%

Q.11: The COE program has provided me with adequate background that I can build on to continue higher studies for the MS and PhD degrees.

Satisfaction

Percentage

524%

432%

324%

211%

19%

Almuni Comments

I think you need to look again about Coe-Program which can give student more Applied technical education more than theory . As well as, the Program need to focus on specific area of computer fields.Regards my current position in Ericsson, I will tell you about 2 important things that are very important:

1. Regards the network courses:You may know that a lot of the COE graduates work in networks department. So, I think there should be more concentration on networks courses, specially in the main devices that almost there in every company. E.g. routers, switches, firewalls, loadbalancers.

2. Regards UNIX:

Also most companies uses UNIX or LINUX as the main OS for their servers. So, more focus on this part need to be given(either full course or may be part of a courese …)

3. Database:The who does not works in networking is working in database. The unique course was taken was not enough. I think additional courses need to be taken in this area.

4. For the computer orgnisation, architucture, and VLSI design. Those courses were not useful in my profisnal work. And as far as I know, here in KSA, there is minimal practicing for these courses.

5. For programming, the JAVA courses were excellent. I suggest to add some other langauges and web design course(php, jsp, ajax..)

I suggest to make different pathes under COE. (Networking-Digital Design-Database+programming[even not coe but this what job market need])

COE program shall focus more on:1. Realistic projects: project that enhance Saudi Arabia market needs2. Self-learning techniques: teaching how to learn 3. Arabization technology: transfer technology to our culture

The only thing that the department is not providing for its students and the field isdemanding it, is the project management.I hope the department takes care of it and include a course in the COE track.The Existing COE program helped me achieve several milestones in my career.I managed with ease to get a good GPA in the MS program at a top US universityI also managed to find several scholarships based on my COE profileUpon graduation, I was attracted by several companies to work on their projectsOne point to be noted: I feel COE helped me gain strong self-learning skillsI worked on software development on several occassions and did self-learning Despite working outside the scope of my expertiseThe hardware industry is small: but I feel that the engineering skills learnt thruCOE helped me go a long wayComments:

1) Encourage the Student to get for the Following Cirtificates:a. Project Management Professionalb. ITIL …etc

2) Include The Network Security Subject (if it is Not Included) I think that the COE major is very interesting however it lacks the current use of tools and the ability to apply the studies to actual use. It was mostly based on theory and the projects were also based on theory only with no tanjable results. I was able to assess the COE files in the US and other similar level universities and found out that the methods used in teaching and transerring knowledge was far better than what was used in KFUPM. I strongly recommend that KFUPM adapts a more hands on approach that puer theory. I have been very successful in my career. I have worked in the field since 1991 and now works for a very large software firm (Micrsoft)The COE program provided me with a great foundation of how to study technology and develop technical skills. I had studied law in the US after my COE degree and I think the combination was what enabled me to advance my career through the management ranks.

I am now looking to go and do an MS/PHD and I am hoping to build on the skills I acquired in the COE program.What I think is missing from computer engineering progrma is the management part. There is no mandatory courses in th management field. There should be at least one course conentrating in the planning, orgnizing, communicating and controloing onesfelf and others. This will help studnets be more productive from the beginning of their career. In addition to this, there should be continues imporvment in the program as the IT industury is chaning allot. What I can see the differnce between students who graduated from Management Information System and studnts who graduated from computer scine or computer enginnering is that MIS graduate are better in communication skills as they have been given the chance in their program although computer engineering and computer scince studnts are better in techincal skills but techincal skills are not enoguh without effective commuincation skills.

In addition to this, studnts need to have general courses in finaince and econmic courses as they might be working in the banking industry. The objective of these courses is to intorudce the very general enviroment of banking. This course should concentrate on financial statements analysis and it should also conetrate on very general concepts such as inflation and projects budgeting techinces.

Software engineering course should also be made a required course instead of ellective course as the majorty of computer engineering graduate are working in the software industry either as developoer or desingers.

There are many coruses that needs ot be dropped from the curculm such as some Islamic courses and Arabic coruses.The chemstry course needs to be droped also. Although I am working in the largest oil provider in the world, I have not go through this course. Some other courses needs to be reconsidered as well such as VLSI design which are irrelevant to the market.

The main thing I need to consider here is a good advertisment program for oreination studnts with emphasising the differnece between computer engineering, computer scince and management information system majors. I think the COE Program need to inclued more Manetory or Elective Courses with Lab and Real Projects ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...using avilable famouse products and tecnology.

1. The COE department never teach me how to search? make an essay ?or scientific paper at all . Its like high school, just lecture, assignment and an exam at the end. The lectures must be from different sources instead of following just one text book.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

2. Sometimes I feel that the exam questions are to challenge the student instead of enforcing the knowledge that he got through the semester

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

3. The courses are not the latest,, there are new subjects tought all over the world but not in COE at KFUPM,,,,

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

4. Please push student to use the library to find the knowledge ,,, not just listining to the lecturer

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I think this survey should be more comprehensive and innteractive to make it easy for students to give comments. Eleven questions are not enough at all.

I am doing my master degree. I thnik more math courses are needed in the COE undergraduate program so that the student becomes more ready to do research. Courses such as signals and systems, Linear Algebra,

Optimization, Numerical Methods.The CPOE program when I was studying did not have a clear focus on one area like computer networks. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...The jobs available in the country for our field are mainly Networking or Software development. I don’t know any of my colleques that worked in any other fields .I want to thank our steam university and COE department that put us directly im the market competetion. One note to give all graduated students more opportinity is to force all students taking COE444 or any other related courses to get the CCNA, either by easing the process or making more shortcourses or any other appropiate way to give them more value as he will graduate.Add more practical skills extra programs (i.e. some market certificates in networking) and give some focus to new technologies in communication and networking (i.e. IP telephony, video, security..).Make another survey collecting info about job positions and describtion for COE graduates or higher study fields.Activate and support continuos education after graduation through e-learning or special diploma or technical programs.Kindly focus more on Wireless Communication as it’s grown displine in KSA with very high demand. I have studeed Msc in computer engineering at KSU also I took some courses in USA. Currently, I am doing Ph.D. in Malaysia. KFUPM is superier compared to other universites. The competetion enveronment in KFUPM created the graduates high level of knowldge and professionalty. …I have graduated from COE on 1989, I have seen the program changed since then. My resposnice above was based on that period program. Also, when graduated, the market was not ready for my studies thus I ended up wokring in a Telecommunication field which at the time required more EE background....1) I’m doing a master degree now at UTS in Sydney-Australia, before starting I needed to take 4 levels of English courses with Insearch English Institute to qualify for the university English requirement. What I was weak at is the Academic Writing Skill; all my other skills are excellent (8 out of 9 in IELTS). We learned only to write technical reports (ENGLISH 214) but not academic, which is required in both IELTS and TOFEL exams in Australia, UK, US and Canada for example.

2) The CCSE should over new courses (at least, if not a complete major) in IT Security, Network Security, System Security, Database Security and Information Security, it is the most required knowledge in the market

now.I think the COE program does not meet the country requirement. When I graduated, I had to take so many courses to be able to become a competent engineer in the fields of network, telecommunications and others. Also, the program is in need of having management and finance courses. Such course help the engineer to interact with work environment more efficiently. The curriculum we had, I don’t know if it is still the same or not, was meant for industrial areas and it doesn’t meet our local companies requirement. I hope there are improvement in today’s CEO program.

The COE staff wasn’t friendly enough to encourage the future engineers of the country. To elaborate more, the instructors we had treated the student too strict and the program was too difficult to handle not because of the material but because of the faculty. I graduated from the high school with excellent grade but I wasn’t able to keep with the university staff due to the faculty issue. I thought the problem was with us as student but after joining Saudi Aramco I realized immediately the problem was with University. Then, I completed my MS degree in MBA and I was able to graduate with GPA 3.6 out of 4. I wish you the best and let us hear from your side.

Thank you a lot for giving me the opportunity to participate in the survey. Best wishes Dears, ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...In order to improve COE program, I suggest to re-look at COE Program and try to match it with what market ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Looking for. For example , we are studing and concetrate on Logics , chipsit while no requiremnts in market ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...for such skills except Intel corp. I understand the market will change and mind will change but at the time………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...things change we could change the program. Moreover, I suggest, to concentrate more in Network filed, ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

Systems management filed with real expalmes. Let expalin to you more, we have studied at COE program ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Email how it is working, same for netowrk and OS. But there is no real touch with Microsft exchange or IBM ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Lotusnotes to understand real example for Email protocol. Same thing will be applicable for others.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Appreicate COE Program and rellay offer me a lot for biulding my self.I wish that we focused more on Open Source operating systems such as Linux. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Currently, although my GPA was below 3.0, I am a very high achiever in my department. The department is ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...very proud of KFUPM graduate. We really set a good example for outstanding employee. Actually, The COE program was very good and competitive to the international COE programs. But, unfortunately the college lake to some professional instructors and need to improve the way of teaching. Furthermore, dealing with the students by giving them more motevation to increase their confidence and creativity should be considered. Anyhow, in the last four years the college has been got better.Thanks and regards,The COE programe need to be revised requlerly to match the technology development and job market needs and requirments.I am currently working at EXPEC COMPUTER CENTER at Saudi Aramco. The work enviroment here is completely different from what we tought in the University. However, the best thing I have gained from the COE program is the way of study itself. For example, the problem solving practice, work under presure, team work,assignments and homeworks, the way of thinking and others important skills. However, in the technical side we need to have more practical applications than just theories. We need to have more labs in Networking, Data Storage Management, Operating Systems, Comunication and other important fields.

Also, new courses need to be produced and others need to be removed or

made as electives.Example of the courses that need to be transfer as elective is COE 360.Example of the courses that need to be added are courses relates to High performance computing, data storage management (Storage Area Network (SAN), Network Attach Storage (NAS)) and other subjects.

The COE program needs to give more attention to research and presentation skills. Students should be encourgaged to develop research papers and try to publish them in the appropriate periodicals.

The program should also focus on new developments and technologies in the computer and electronics fields.

The subjects and courses provided by the COE program do not reflect the actual market needs. You are focused mainly on VLSI where it is almost impossible to find a company that requires VLSI background.

I recommend you to include new subjects to the COE curriculum like security, advance networking, high performance computing and advance OS topicsI’d recoment narrowing the courses to more specific fields that are needed for the job market those days. Like having submajors in networking, robots … etc. and more resources to be available to the COE 400 lab. Instead of the students paying.I notice that most of the questions in this survey focus on the COE program itself and never mentioned anything to evaluate the teaching methods for COE major to deliver better product. From my personal experience during my study as COE student, at the end of the last semester, I seen students pushing the instructor to give them higher grades and luckly it worked. I am asking here, didn’t the instructor him self evaluate the student very well or it is matter of meeting the department requriements in term of how many students got “A” and how many “F”. And never ending this story of hearing all students can get an A grade at the beginning of the semester but at the end it is different. I am really appreciating to graduated as COE student up to now and reach to that sucessful position but what I am expecting is more as KFUPMer (I don’t deny that it is university and me but each has to take his portion).

if I got the chance to complete my studies, I won’t select KFUPM of course because of the reason mentioned. I wish that our teaching staff will focus on this and experience the best practice world wide.From department management prospective, they have to focus in micro-level on teaching, grading….etc and create kind of confidential channel between COE depertment chairman and students.

Finally, KFUPM is still holding the initial stages of best universities and I wish it will hold that forever in such a compeiting field but with your great

efforts and your vision toward the university and the world.Eventhough I graduated in 1990 but I still believe that the COE programm was one of the best when evaluating other programs delivrables. Since then I was not aware of the changes but beeing an IT manager I would like to see more programming skills cooped with other skills for an engineer. Also, more soft skills like time management, presentaiton skills, project skills,and most important self marketing espetially for fresh graduates.

I wish you all the best and many thanks to Allah then to KFUPM for making my life a wounderfull one.

Spetical thanks to Mohammed Othman and Sadig Saite for their guidance and care when I was a student in the collcage of COE.

1- #1 has rating “4” because the market in saudi arabia has a little bit different requirements than what COE is. This doesn’t mean COE should adapt to the market. Actually, adapting to the market will degrade the quality of the COE program.

2- #4 has rating “3” because in COE, the human interaction skills are not focused on. It was only COE 390 and ENGL214 that covered such topics. Though, it didn’t have sufficient practicing, especially when it comes to “teamwork”.

3- I found that teamwork is the culture that we really miss in our education, as we usually emphasize competition rather..

4- #6 has rating “5” because lots of COE instructors and proffessors were actually good life example of this. To mention some good examples, I mention Dr. Mayez, Dr. Alaauddin Amin, Kamal Shinaoua, and Dr. Mohammad K. Ibrahim.

5- #8 has rating “5” because each COE course required special kinds of skills in studying, projects, and labs, that gave us practice in learning new skills when required.

6- #9 has rating “4” because COE elective courses were like concentrated on Networking! Topics like robotics, digital electronics, which are very important and promising were not sufficiently offered in elective courses.

7- Finally, I woul like to thank KFUPM, and specifically COE, for the great knowledge and skills it gave me. Not only that, but also for the ambition it embedded in me to become a positive contributor in the society. Alhamdulillah, I am a major contributor in robotics activites in “Jeddah Scientific Innovation Club”. I am part of a team that develops and conducts robotics competitions for high school students all over the kingdom. Thanks to Dr. Mayez and Dr. Mohammad Al-Rabaa for their encouragements and motivation.

Best regards,Rida Hasanain

Saudi Arabian Airlines - ITJeddah

The COE program need to restructured to meet todays demanding business for example I remember from my program there was consentration on networking courses which only make eligible for an help desk employee First, I want to thank everyone that help, guide and teach me during my studing live. In fact, every time I am priding that I am COE student graduated from KFUPM. fairness, the COE studing is more theoretically than practial work life. So, I hope in the future COE student will be more involved and adapted the work life needs.The course theoretically was very good; however, there was a big practical gap which, I suggest to be, bridged by cooperation of the IT enterprises.Currently, I am participating in Technology Transfer project at KACST. My main contribution is towards ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Communication, Firmware design mainly on FPGA, Cryptography, System Engineering and Project………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...Management. COE did not prepare or guided me properly in all of this direction. I am sure that KFUPM and………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...COE are capable of achieving that. I suggest the following: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...1. Contract a third party to help new students choose their most suitable major………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...2. Activate and utilize the role of the Academic Advisor to advice instead of to sign approvals………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...3. Managing and controlling summer trainings properly………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...4. Promoting and encouraging student to participate in world wide accepted certificate and committees………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

5. Doing more actual life COE or Engineering related projectsCOE program focus on very deep technical for MS and PHD degree, but not considering student technical skills gained. I suggest to make deep technical courses as selective such as VLSI design and focus on engineering and technical skills which would help student career. I want to explain how our program is important to many companies:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...1-I am still a contract employee………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...2- My salary is equal to an airconditions techneican………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...3-I am working in a totally different field………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...4-there is no company needes our skills, and do not give us a chance to improve our skills by trainnings program………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...5- By the way, there is no serious chance in our market to the COE and its program.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...6- the main opportunities I got were a presale Engineer ,programmer, and web designer.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...7- many companies prefer techenicans………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...8- And (by asking friendes)many companies ask for experience . but they give beginers jobs , I tried to take courses like CCNA to make my CV strong but still techenicans are prefered. I can tell you I feel I have stronger background from others who graduated from another universities but our companies looks for high GPA from any university. I hope that I wrote understandable words.I wish there was more session about personal skills like presentations, research, writing technical documents etc.……The COE program is mostly thioritical, and the technicial side or practical side is limited to projects which does not imply the application of thioritecal parts. I would suggest that all COE students spend one full

semester working in a project in association with a technicial company ( of course this might include more than one student) where this project is directly or indirectly connected to every, mostly every subject have been tought to the students. To be honst with you, after I graduate, I could not find a job which is directly related to my major because we don’t have enough technicial experience.

KFUPM is great, and COE in particular is a fantastic major, but needs more concentration in the appliyed part.I think that we have been given theoritical part more than practical althought we had many labs but still we lack practice. I am talking about hardware and networking. I feel that we more belong to software than hardware and since my intention was networking from the beginning, I don’t feel like COE program has contributed too much to my carrier because all what I am applying is from my background from a few cisco courses I have taken. I think that networking is not given much attention in our COE program. Maybe because of the lack in networking lecturer I don’t know.Thanks for your concern and for trying to get feedback from graduates to improve the department.I have worked as JSP and ASP.NET programmer since 2006. The network side I just change the password for the firewall and the routers. In addtion to that, I suggest alternative solutions for the network which in the company because it seems that it is flat network to be changed to Star-Topology. I have trained to be Manager of Information Security (ISO 27001) . I feel the security fields for the network courses is rare at COE Department although Information is the product for most of the companies.

Another important thing, CCNA & CCNP should be studied by all COE students. This will help most of students to start projects since the 1st day of employement. This will reflect the good picture of KFUPM. That’s what I have now. I asked a question to my work college in the first week after I got hired about what are related courses that I will be using its skills in the work environment, the answer was none, then -on second thought- little of English courses.Now I’m working with graduates from COE, ICS and MIS from the various universities of the kingdom and we are compensated equally, That will raise the question: Did the COE program made me distinguished between other majors? Is a COE program from KFUPM recognized in the company more than other universities and colleges?

So the BS degree that I obtained was only a key to enter the job market, then I have to work hard all the way though to prove myself no matter in what major I studied or any university I joined.

Now I’m trying to get the SAP certificate and become an SAP consultant . IS that a goof follow up to the COE program. I strongly recommend emphasizing the technical and lab exercize (getting hands-on), especially networking. I graduated from KFUPM, COE, with just a little practical experience on networking equipment, cabling…etc. It is the best way for someone to understand how things are working and are connected in a network. This also applies to other diciplins in COE and other majors, not only networking!Again, I recommend developing a course or a program that is didicated to teching a student how things are in real life.Dears, First of all, thanks for your interest in improving the COE department and its courses. There are some points that I want to put on a table. First, COE programs (both summer and Coop) don’t have the new technologies that work markets need, e.g. IP services such as IP-Telephony and IPTV. I agree with you that we learned the concept but not that much which will guarantee satisfaction of employers. COE has many courses that a market does not request such as VLSI. However, it is a core for any COE but we can find solutions. Mainly, markets need the following:1- Networks’ specialists with Cisco experience. (Planning, implementing, analysis, administration)2- Systems’ Administrators such as UNIX, Linux and windows.3- Servers, firewalls, switches and routers – (everything in data centers’) implementations.4- Integrated systems such as IP-Cameras, fire systems, access controls and other automation systems.Again, thanks for your survey and I will be glad to hear about/from you. So, please feel free to contact me any time.Thanks,Abdulkareem JabrJabr.kareem@gmail.comMobile: +966-5-60059297I think there is a gap between the job market requrments, companis expectation and COE graduate expectation, I think this gap should be minimized.I am happy to participate in such survey like this. I would like to mention that even thought I graduated from COE on end of 2003, but till nowadays 2009 (around 5years) I cannot see my formal education dept. COE to be

one of top compititiveness departments in world. In my opinion, I think COE has to concentrate on two primary directions:

①. Industry’s needs a fresh graduate who is a system administrator with capability to manage Unix boxes, Routers/Switches, Security system, and Troubleshooting.

②. Graduate programs need similar requirments to Industry’s needs with addition to “innovation”.

I would like thank Dr. Sadiq Seet for everything and for what he did to COE.I would like to thank COE department for all the effort their doctors and staff employees have been contributing. I feel, as a KFUPM graduate,that almost all my colueges in my job have a deep respect to all KFUPM graduates.and I can tell from my experience since I went to Arizona state university before attending KFUPM that KFUPM “produces” students with a rigid science background, although not strong enough in english comparativly speaking.Thak you and I hope En Sha’a Allah I’ll get my master degree from COE department.

I am a 94 students, that means the program at that time is a bit old but for that time it was just perfect. I would like to tell you that the micro processing, VLSI...etc. part of the study did not help me a lot as my work now is a network specialist. I feel that network should be given more time due to IT needs. Information security was not available or at least not as important as today. I think the graduate should have solid background in the Information security as a COE student or even a computer science student.

If the Information security is excluded then the breadth of the program is fine, but the depth has to be tailored specially to suit the market in KSA. The gap still needs to be fulfilled. The sub major in KFUPM is not very clear for COE I think students should be advised to concentrate on one field of their study like (Data/Voice/Video Networks, Information security, Micro computing, micro processing and VLSI). I would realy suggest to increase the foucs of both Security (in general), web and operating systems integrity to the COE program