Cloud hosting software project empowers WVU students for hands-on learning, career readiness

Computer science majors are learning how to code and work with real-world data thanks to the collaborative WVU Cloud Analytics Faculty Fellowship (WVU Photo/Kaley LaQuea).

West Virginia University students in Tom Devine’s software engineering class got a crash course last semester in building the plane as they flew it, harnessing their budding coding skills to create functional web applications that utilize real-world data.

Story by Kaley LaQuea, Communications Specialist
Photos by Kaley LaQuea

Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Sponsored by the West Virginia High Technology Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the WVU Cloud Analytics Faculty Fellowship incentivizes faculty to provide opportunities for students to get hands-on coding experience with real NOAA data. Devine, teaching assistant professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, received the fellowship in the spring and set up his Introduction to Software Engineering course to integrate cloud tools and real-world NOAA data over the summer. This spring semester will be the second iteration of the project within Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

In the revamped course, student groups are tasked with working together to learn Microsoft Azure to create and host a web application that uses NOAA’s weather and climate data in some way. Projects from the fall 2024 cohort ranged from tracking snowfall at ski resorts to penguin migration to a “climate closet” that customized outfits for users based on the predicted weather for a specific location.

“They came up with all kinds of ideas and in only eight weeks have turned them into full stack web applications that live on the cloud and pull data from real NOAA data sets, which I think is invaluable experience for them because web app programming is really, really big in industry right now,” Devine said. “Plus, they're getting the experience of working with real-world data and using the APIs to pull from that data, so it's a very realistic experience. We've had a lot of positive feedback from it.”

Before coming to WVU, John Chambers College of Business and Economics service assistant professor and director of Data Driven WV Joshua Meadows worked with cloud software in the industry. He was one of the program’s inaugural fellows and now serves as the program’s faculty liaison, supporting new fellows like Devine and their cohorts in the semester-long projects. 

“I think this has been a phenomenal program,” Meadows said. “Two fields where we see lots of growth and opportunity in higher education are AI and cybersecurity, and cloud is a huge part of both those disciplines. I think it’s something we’ve heard over and over again from industry partners that this is something that students absolutely need to be prepared for jobs anywhere in the technology industry.”

Chambers graduate Sydney Cowell’s personal experience with natural disaster motivated her fellowship project. After a flood destroyed her school in Richwood, WV in 2016, Cowell became especially passionate about climate science and data technology applications just like this one. Meadows helped Cowell’s group continue the project through Data Driven WV, working with the WV High Tech Foundation to launch the weather monitoring application.

“This experience was transformative, both professionally and personally,” Cowell said. “The WVU Cloud Analytics Fellowship gave me the opportunity to apply my classroom skills to a real-world project that truly mattered to me. Developing and deploying an app in partnership with the WV High Technology Foundation not only reinforced my technical abilities but also gave me the confidence to pursue new opportunities—ultimately leading to me receiving the WVU Outstanding Senior Award.”

Statler students are now getting the opportunity to begin incredible projects that have the potential to grow beyond the classroom too. Computer science major Shannon Seiler hadn’t worked with HTML before Devine’s class and was challenged to jump in with both feet.

“I had to do a lot of research. The first day we got the project, I had to go home and figure out HTML and CSS. We had stuff in lab, but nothing this involved,” Seiler said. “I’m also in a class learning how to do C coding, so it was very interesting to already have to know some stuff for this class that was just now being learned in my C coding class.”

“We didn’t expect how hard it would be to transfer the data and use it, that’s been pretty difficult,” computer science major Julia Van Albert said. “This class is where I get the most hands-on experience, every other class is like you’re creating a program and getting the complete instructions step-by-step.”

Using the NOAA data, Seiler and Van Albert’s group created a fire tracking and fire prediction map that provided live wildfire updates for users. At the end of the semester, groups shared the results of their work through live demonstrations of the sites. The program has expanded across West Virginia with hopes to carry it beyond the Mountain State.

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