MadMongers

Awesome!  Please make sure you've contacted the instructor (Joe King) or Dr. Mowery, per her email:

------------------

From: "Jeanette Mowery" <JMowery@madisoncollege.edu>
Subject: Re: Greetings from Madison PerlMongers and YAPC::NA 2012 outreach

Thanks so much!  The instructor for the course, Joe King, has informed me  that the programming pre-requisite is more important than the biology background.

The link to the course is
http://programs.madisoncollege.edu/programs/bioinformatics-certificate/bioinformatics-algorithms-and-techniques/

But they won't be able to register without getting a student ID.  Registration process is described here:
http://madisoncollege.edu/registration-process

The most important thing would be to let either me or the teacher, Joe King, know that they are planning to register.

  Joe King's email is [ jjking@madisoncollege.edu ].

Thanks again!

Jeanette
Jeanette Mowery, Ph.D.
Biotechnology Department
Madison College
Madison, WI 53704
608 243 4307
Jmowery@madisoncollege.edu

-Steve Kaftanski, command-line perl tools guy. 

You mean people could take this without the required

bioinformatics class?

"Enrollment Requirements: Prerequisites: Introduction to Bioinformatics, 10007180; and Python Programming, 10152109; or equivalent programming language; or consent of instructor "

It doesn't look advisable to me unless one already had a genetics background. Sounds really interesting though.

Intro to Bioinformatics Biotechnology
Credits: 3Catalog #10007180?

This survey course is an introduction to the concepts and tools used in bioinformatics. The fundamentals of sequence alignment, data mining and next generation sequence analysis will be discussed. This course will also provide the student with an introduction to the web-based tools used by molecular biologists. Students will gain an appreciation for a wide-range of bioinformatics techniques including homology searching, sequence comparison, sequence identification, and analysis of next generation sequencing data. Students will use these skills to contribute to a world-wide effort to identify and annotate a flood of previously unknown sequences generated by metagenomics efforts.

So first of all, if you're at all interested you should get in touch with the instructor / Dr. Mowery;

  I'm sure they would be happy to let you know what they're expecting :-)

I believe they were highly motivated to round up a few more paying students.  If someone from 

  this list finds out more, please consider letting the rest of us know!

My completely-uninformed opinion is that ANYONE on this group is more familiar with basic 

  data manipulation than the average beginning Biostudent; so much so that when we were 

  trolling for Bioinformaticists a year ago, I seriously considered enrolling in one of these courses 

  partly to help drive traffic to YAPC. I based my unfounded-optimism that I wouldn't be 

  overwhelmed on deep-skimming the (now eleven-year-old) ORA book "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics"; 

  the level of Perl use was even more primitive than my forte (oneliners).

Alas, the extra-schooling didn't work out for my schedule; also it turned out that YAPC was not hurting for 

  participants.  Plus, you've already noted that there seems to be a shift to Python and away from Perl, 

  but I have to believe that this is (or at least was) programming at a level where anyone can exercise 

  their chrestomathic skills and literally program in ANY/ALL reasonable languages.

Well rocky, I don't mean to dispute your concern

  (I certainly wouldn't want someone getting in over their heads academically!)

  but I did want to lay out what the thinking was a year ago, and why 

  Dr. Mowery may have contacted us; I sincerely hope it works out for someone!

-Steve Kaftanski, command-line perl tools guy.

MATC's web site is very confusing. Not that it's your fault but it's a problem. It's not clear for example with that class

Bioinformatics Algorithms and Techniques

if a person has to be accepted into the Bioinformatics Certificate program or not. Applying for admission costs $15 and who knows how long it takes for them to decide? (I just applied for admission into one and it takes more than 2 days I know so far :-)  So if you do have to be accepted into Bioinformatics that meant you had to have a college degree in biology.

"Admission Requirements
Applicants should submit transcripts of college coursework including verification that a Bachelor’s Degree in a biological science was earned.

Certificate Description
This certificate is designed for individuals with a college background in the life sciences to prepare them for careers in the emerging field of bioinformatics. In the certificate program, students study the design and use of bioinformatics tools, Unix, the Perl programming language, Oracle relational database, and internet technology."

That seems very odd for something that looks like it is more suited for someone in something computational or mathematical. I wonder if the governor ever wanted to take something like this? :-)

Whereas if you wanted to study Java it's a lot less clear what requirements there are if any for the java developer cert.

http://madisoncollege.edu/program-info/it-java-professional-developer-certificate

BUT if you wanted to study using java on android you are in a far far more stringent set of qualifications despite it being more or less the same old language. Kinda looks like some turf protection to me.

http://madisoncollege.edu/program-info/it-android-applications-development-certificate

To be eligible for this certificate, you must be:

• A Madison College IT programming student who has completed either 10-152-102 Advanced Visual Basic .NET Programming, 10-152-112 Advanced Java Programming, 10-152-141 C# Programming in Visual Studio.NET, 10-152-157 Ruby on Rails Development, or 10-152-190 Java Programming – IDC; OR
• An IT professional with 2 years experience in an Object Oriented programming language (e.g. Java, Visual Basic .NET, C#, Ruby on Rails),

I just wanted to follow up that in my experience if you apply for admission to a certificate program it only takes them a week to make a decision.