By Julia Mericle
Editor-in-chief
This semester, the Android App Development Club asked faculty members to submit requests for app ideas to use in the classroom.
The club, which started last semester, aims to create a space where students who enjoy web, computer or phone-based programming can learn how to make what they want to make, according to Samuel Chen, sophomore bioinformatics major and member of the club.
“Every one of us has ideas for what we want to develop because we all came to this club because we have that desire to build something,” Chen said.
Club member Michael Makutonin said the new club initiative requires faculty with app ideas to submit requests through a link on my.sbu.edu in which they write a brief description of the app they want. Once submitted, a club member will meet with the professor to go through a timetable and plan to complete the app.
“The purpose of this new thing that we are rolling out is twofold. On one hand, we want our club members to be engaged and to have projects and to be able to develop their skills,” said Makutonin, a freshman biology and computer science double major. “On the other hand, we see a need in the school community for custom web pages and for applications and things that are getting integrated into the classroom environment — a lot more than they used to a few years ago.”
Chen said the first project the club worked on was creating an app to guide visitors around campus. He described it as “sort of like a Google Maps for the school.”
However, the club has taken on bigger projects this semester, one in collaboration with C4, a business-consulting group of about 50 students that works with the Olean Business Development Corporation.
Todd Palmer, department of management chair, suggested the collaboration between the two clubs when he recognized C4 needed a way to track categories of clients and the amount of time spent with each.
“One thing we recognize is we need a much better way of tracking their time,” Palmer said. “We were unable to find a commercially available app that either fit our needs or that we could afford. So, I saw something about the Android App Development Club, and I approached them and they are working on it right now.”
Palmer said beta testing, which involves doing small tests of a piece of software, getting back information and trying to make the software better, should begin in March.
Additionally, members of the club working on the C4 project will go to the Western New York Business Plan Competition to participate in a pitch competition, mainly to see what other schools think of the app.
“We are hoping that there may be a commercial possibility,” Palmer said. “We always want to make money.”
The club also planned to collaborate this semester with two students working on their own development of an app to help students taking organic chemistry classes.
David Hilmey, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, requested the creation of the app, which began back in 2014. Samantha Terhaar, junior bioinformatics major, said Hilmey got the request from an organic chemistry professor at the time who recognized that analyzing Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectra presented students with problems.
Terhaar works with junior biology major Tien Ha on the creation of the app.
“Students will be able to select problems, which will include each of the three spectra for a specific molecule,” Terhaar said. “The students are then able to answer questions corresponding to the spectra…The app will indicate whether the students’s answers are right or wrong and provide feedback about them.”
The app also provides professors with a place to refer students to study that they can trust, said Terhaar.
Terhaar and Ha decided to integrate this project with the Android App Development Club to overcome obstacles they had been struggling with, Terhaar said.
“We figured being around other Android developers in the club would allow us to bounce ideas off of them and potentially come up with solutions to some of the problems we’ve been having,” she said.
Chen emphasized the helpfulness of the quiz-like format of the app.
“It teaches you organic synthesis reactions as you play it,” Chen said. “So you learn to get good points on the game, and you just sort of by accident know how to ace your organic chemistry class.”
Steven Andrianoff, computer science department chair, said he thinks the club provides a great incentive to offer to accepted students in the computer science department.
“This is something that we want to promote because I think it helps us to attract students that want to get involved in that type of thing,” Andrianoff said. “This is a distinctive that we could promote on our campus.”
mericlje13@bonaventure.edu
