Friday, February 1, 2013

The Office of Student Financial Assistance will again be holding various financial aid events throughout February, March and April – ranging from helping students to file their Financial Aid Applications to Information Sessions about the Financial Aid process.
We would like to remind our students that they can begin filling out their 2013-2014 FAFSA Application as early as today! The 2013-2014 FAFSA covers Fall Semester 2013, Spring Semester 2014.
By completing the FAFSA students are applying for state and federal financial aid in the form of grants, loans and work study. Most colleges and universities require the FAFSA to be completed to apply for their institutional grants and scholarships. It is important for all students to complete the FAFSA!
Due to state funding for the Illinois MAP Grant – students are strongly encouraged to file their 2013-2014 FAFSA by March 1, 2013!!
To help make the 2013- 2014 FAFSA process smoother, the Office of Student Financial Assistance is offering the following events:
Thursday, February 7th – 2013 Free Financial Aid Workshop
7pm - General Financial Aid Overview Presentation (also available in Spanish)
6pm to 8:30pm – Computer lab will be open for students to file their 2013-2014 FAFSA that day!
To reserve your spot please sign up online at http://www.cod.edu/tuition/financial_aid/paying_for_college.aspx
Monday, February 11th to Monday, April 15th – FAFSA Lab Opens
Students are encouraged to stop by the FAFSA Lab located at SSC 2222 and file their 2013-2014 Free Application For Federal Student Aid, FAFSA. The lab will be open:
Monday through Thursday – 9am to 5:30pm
Friday – 9am to 3:30pm
February, March, April 2013 - Financial Aid Information Sessions
These are free information sessions that will be offered throughout February, March and April. Topics to be covered will be how to borrow wisely and understanding your Federal Stafford Loans; how grades impact your financial aid and what type of financial aid is available and where to start. For dates and information please visit us online at http://www.cod.edu/tuition/financial_aid/paying_for_college.aspx
 
For more information students can contact the Office of Student Financial Assistance at 630-942-2251 or email us at financialaid@cod.edu.  Jennifer Prusko, Financial Aid Representive, Office of Student Financial Assistance.
This morning, the Career Services new website launched and I wanted to be sure you all knew where to find internship information and point out some helpful tools.

The Career Services website is: www.cod.edu/careerservices.

You will find it is organized by user (student, faculty / staff, community, employer). You will find internship information under the Student section and the Faculty / Staff section.

The shortcut for internship information for students is: www.cod.edu/internships

The shortcut for the academic forms are www.cod.edu/internshipforms.

I also wanted to share that I have added Academic Internship Requirements and an Internship Checklist for students pursuing credit. I hope this will help clarify the process and answer questions. You will also find an FAQ on the student site.
 
Sara Kirby is the Assistant Manager of Career Services, 3258 Student Services Center (SSC).  Her phone number is 630/942-2230.  She can also be reached at csc@cod.edu.

Friday, January 25, 2013

What is Administrative Distance & Metric Distance?

I just had an email from a student asking, "what is administrative distance and Metric Distance?"I will give a brief answer here, but if any of you want more detail, please let me know.

When a Cisco router has more than one route to a particular destination and those routes come from different route sources (directly connected, static, and/or dynamic routing protocol(s)), the router ios uses the administrative distance to decide which of those routes to place in the routing table (the best route(s)).

Whereas, the metric value is used when there is more than one way to get to a particular destination and all of the routes to that destination come from a single route source (i.e. RIP dynamic routing protocol).

As we discussed in class, the metric used by the routing protocol will be different, depending on the routing protocol. RIP uses hop count, Cisco’s OSPF uses bandwidth; EIGRP uses bandwidth and delay by default (but can be configured to include load and reliability).

The administrative distance value is set by Cisco and not an actual standard. However, other vendors do use it. The route that has the lower administrative distance will be preferred over the router with the higher administrative distance and will be added to the routing table. The term “trustworthy” is commonly used when defining administrative distance. The lower the administrative distance value, the more “trustworthy” the route.

I hope this helps - Joanne

Network Security Engineer, Chicago, IL

Hi Joanne!

I am in the process of looking for my replacement. I need a network security engineer that meets the following job description:

Must have a solid understanding and working knowledge of networking, security, server hardware and operating systems as well as the interdependencies between them. Additional Responsibilities: May be responsible for day-to-day coaching, providing on-the-job and formal training, reference materials, procedures, and system documentation. May interface with other stakeholders including vendors, application development and technical support staff. May provide inventory and asset management resources to the IT security operation, including office administrative supplies, security specific resources such as SecurID cards or cryptographic key management, specialized security software, etc. Must possess working knowledge of Security Vulnerabilitiy assessments; Information Security Standards and Practices; firewall technology and administration; knowledge of Intrusion Detection system technology and adminstration; public-key infrastructure technology. Windows and Unix Administration is a must.

If you know anyone who would qualify and is interested please pass this on. It is hard to find someone with this background in Chicago so I am reaching out to you.

Thank you!

Scott Otocki CISSP

Network Engineer Specialist

630-854-8204