Faculty Profiles

Andrew Strange, Instructor

Education & Credentials:

• Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, 1976, Industrial Electronics Technology
• Lethbridge Community College, 1975, Electronics Technician
• Since commencing full time employment in 1976, various industrial short courses and trade show/conference tutorials.

Began teaching at MHC: 1996

Instructing at Medicine Hat College is an opportunity for me to share many firsthand experiences with Information Technology students. After 30 years of supporting a campus area network at Defense Research and Development Canada, Suffield research station, I have gained many skills and abilities that I think are required for future networkers to have.

I instruct three different courses each with a unique style:

• ITEC 170 is based on the requirements for the Network Plus exam. This course is mainly theory and in class presentations followed by a mix of hands-on activities and in class work sheets to expand on the material presented.
• NETW200, an advanced networking course using Cisco equipment. In this hands-on course. The topics and knowledge obtained in ITEC170 are put into practice and observed on real networking equipment. The topics covered in this course are based on the Cisco CCNA certification program.
• ITEC240, is the Web Server Administrator course. The goal here is to provide as much as possible a real-world work environment, with teamwork activities to explore the ways of providing web servers for clients. To make this possible, the class participants are put into small work groups, and are required to create web servers for the first-year students that are learning HTML. Once that server is operational, the group then makes a sales presentation to the 1st year students, to get them to sign up for their service. This activity is only the first of many that the group will complete. Other activities  include creating a servers to support the second year course on advanced web development using ASP.net , ASP.Net core, Apache, and if time permits containerization.

Each of the courses is different, however I try to keep the courses hands on and as real world as I can. The Information Technology workplace and topics are continuously changing and I as an instructor must keep up and be relevant.

What I most enjoy about instructing at Medicine Hat College, is that look on a student's face when they have an "Ah HA" moment, that moment when an abstract networking concept finally makes sense. That moment when they go from just knowing something to being able to see the implementation or be able to troubleshoot an issue themselves without Google.

When not instructing, or preparing for my courses, or learning a new topic, I enjoy building things. I love to travel and will often talk about them.