Touching Hearts Software is a faculty-student partnership and experiential learning opportunity at Lewis University that builds and maintains software projects for external non-profit customers. The goal of Touching Hearts Software is to benefit the community with useful software products while giving students valuable experience designing and building real-world applications.
Through Touching Hearts Software (THS), Lewis University students and faculty will design, develop, deploy, and support software applications and cybersecurity assessments for internal and non-profit external partners. Many of the partners are expected to be Catholic organizations, and so the projects THS pursues will directly serve Catholic parishes, schools, and dioceses across the country. THS will also serve other kinds of external non-profit organizations, helping them advance their missions by providing them tools that help them better serve their members. THS will also serve internal Lewis constituents, delivering quality software products and solutions to on-campus customers.
Lewis University students and faculty will benefit from THS in several ways.
Student talent is easiest to harness when students work on a project as part of a class. We expect most of the projects performed by THS will be staffed by students enrolled in CPSC 44000, CPSC 49200, CPSC 49800, CPSC 49000, and CPSC 69100. However, participants will not be limited to these courses, and a student need not be enrolled in a particular course to participate on a project.
Every project for THS will be sponsored by a faculty member. The faculty member will serve as project manager. As such, they will guide the students as they work on the project, and they will personally help develop parts of the project as needed to ensure that THS delivers to the customer what they have requested on the agreed schedule. It is ultimately the faculty member’s responsibility to make sure that THS delivers to the customer what they need it, but they should manage the enlisted students effectively to achieve this aim so that the students properly experience the flow of a real-world software project.
Because THS is committed to serving non-profit institutions, customers will not be charged for the time students and faculty spend developing the software. However, customers may be charged for services and materials the THS team needs to build and deploy the software, such as software development tools and network services. THS customers may also be charged for ongoing support and maintenance because that may require hiring student workers to provide ongoing support. Such arrangements will be worked out as needed on a per-project basis.
The faculty who sponsor a THS project have a significant challenge: they must manage students to complete a software project for a customer, and they must commit to completing the project should the students fall short. Although faculty will not be compensated for this work, they will accrue benefits:
Touching Hearts Software will provide non-profit community partners a sustainable source of well-managed, high-quality software talent and a desirable and affordable option for building the tools and services they need to serve their members. Lewis University Computer Science students focused on software development and/or cybersecurity will gain a local credit-bearing or volunteer option for gaining invaluable expertise as they transition from school to their careers. And Lewis faculty will have new opportunities for participating in uniquely Lasallian service-scholarship.