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Crockett Hopper, Vice President of Engineering, MyToons.com
Software Engineering Graduate (MSE 2006)
Without any hesitation, Hopper, 36, credits the executive software program for software engineering administered by the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Lifelong Engineering Education as a key factor in his success. As the vice president of engineering, he is responsible for designing the systems that MyToons is currently building, as well as maintaining them and making sure they remain operational. He also recruits and trains developers to make sure the systems scale well during their construction.
“I give the program a lot of credit for giving me the confidence to step into this role,” he says. “When you work for large organizations, you don’t get a lot of opportunity to deal with the whole system end-to-end; you only get put into one small part. This program gave me the opportunity to work on things I wouldn’t necessarily get to in a large company and do projects where I was building entire systems. With the experience I received from UT under my belt, I was ready.”
Part of the reason Hopper feels so confident is because of the good mix of academic work and practical exposure he has gained through his courses. “The combination of reading academic papers and doing real projects by collaborating with people in my field gave me a good feeling of where others were with their experience and the kind of work they were doing,” he says. “I got a good chance to see what’s out there.”
Hopper is certain one of the reasons his employers hired him was because of the experience he gained while at the university. “They told me they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to find someone who could not only come in and do the work but to also be able to help mentor a team, and that’s certainly something you get from the educational side of things,” he says. “Today, it’s not only important that you know how to do your work; you have to know the why behind it and have the ability to teach others about it as well.”
Not only did the program work well with his full-time professional schedule, but its intensive courses fit his personality for absorbing information. The program required him to come to Austin only once a month to attend classes for eight hours each day on a Friday and Saturday. “By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around,” he says, “my brain was fried.” He usually arrived at Austin the day before classes started to meet with his study partners at a coffee shop or restaurant and faced the onslaught of classes Friday and Saturday. Hopper appreciated the fact that he had to come to Austin once a month because it “was nice to be able to get away from work” to focus on school.
Since his master’s report on reconciling conflict between two different object models was based on a problem he encountered during his time at the United Services Automobile Association, a Fortune 500 financial services business based in San Antonio that serves military members and their families, he believes it is best to have some real-world experience before entering the program. Working at the association helped him discover “in a very personal sense” that he needed software engineering instruction. “I ran head-first into a brick wall that came about from one team building a user-interface model and another team building a system object model,” he says. “The two weren’t reconciled until the teams were in the middle of construction, so I wrote my master’s report on a technique to use when trying to resolve those models earlier in the software development process.”
Hopper decided to attend the university’s program in 2004 after working for several years at Alltel Information Services, a large software shop in Little Rock, Arkansas, that specialized in banking software. After working there for five years, he realized computer science did not provide him with all the tools needed to build large software systems, and after considering some expert advice, he decided to get a master’s degree in software engineering.
Margaret Brown Millikin,
Software Engineering Graduate (MSE 2001)
I've enjoyed working as a programmer and in other IT jobs and have always wanted to keep learning and progressing. Although I needed an advanced degree, an MBA was not for me - I like software and technology. After devoting two intense years to the Software Engineering studies, my career really took off - I now work with the latest web technologies and recently was promoted to management. And I still keep in touch with friends and professors at UT. My life was really improved by three little letters - MSE!
Jim Woods
Software Engineering Graduate (MSE 2005)
I was very impressed with the program. The curriclum is relevent, the lectures tend toward superior, and the course work is appropriately challenging. It is graduate school. I experienced a significant amount of personnel and professional growth directly attributable to the program. My perspective on software systems has changed significantly, and the manner in which I address problems, software or other, is more reflective and intellectual. Education changes people for the better. For me, it has been noticed at work and at home.
Michael Wisor, Director of Engineering, AMD-Software Research and Development
Software Engineering Graduate (MSE 2001)
The Master’s in Software Engineering is an excellent program. Not only do you get a quality education from the University of Texas at Austin, but you also get the added benefit of being able to interact with other software professionals in the industry and to hear first-hand their companies’ experiences in software engineering.
Alumni Focus Group Sound bites:
"If I knew who my classmates would be it would have made a significant difference in my enrolling in this program – I have personal relationships with all my former classmates."
"It is a fact of life that your job is being outsourced. UT’s EM Master’s provides job security."
"I was so impressed by the personal involvement of the professors and their extraordinary willingness and commitment to help us get the very most out of this program. There wasn’t a professor whose home phone number we didn’t have – I have even called them at 8am on Sunday."
"Final decision was based on one thing: UT. When I matched UT’s overall engineering and business programs against reachable universities and programs, it had the best prestige, and also provided contacts."
"It also helps to know where these people are from that went through the program. People that were in our classes came from Houston, Oregon, Dallas, Washington DC, and New Orleans. And the diversity of disciplines as well – it’s not only high-tech, it’s also hospital industries, construction, and others."
"It was fun. The classroom experience was the best part of the program."
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