The Master in Computer Science (MCIC) aims to train highly qualified graduates in the development of basic and applied research at the frontier of computer science knowledge, emphasizing Data Science.
Thus, one of the important points is the monitoring of the graduates of the course (important in the context of the Program’s self-assessment) to realize the academic and professional potential that the MCIC has with the community the course intends to serve. The follow-up actions aim to assess MCIC graduates’ insertion in the scientific, academic and professional world to diagnose the frequent changes and needs in these areas. This assessment supports the revision and curriculum organization of the MCIC. Additionally, as Computer Science graduates’ formation with an emphasis on Data Science is very recent in Brazil, the Program constantly checks the adherence of graduates to the job market in its various shades.
In addition, since its inception, the MCIC has carried out actions to promote adequate monitoring of its students and alumni. In the enrollment, socioeconomic information is requested from the students. From the information collected, we built the students’ profiles and compared them with the graduates’ profiles. The basic strategy for monitoring and accompanying graduates is through questionnaires sent to them every year, as well as follow-up via Lattes, Linked-in and Research Gate. This analysis is done annually so that it is possible to see the degree of employability, insertion in the market and career development of the graduates of PPCIC. It is also planned that such monitoring is consolidated organizationally, forming a cohesive and organized group of former students who assist in disseminating, supporting, and assisting future entries. As a result of the work of monitoring the graduates, various information has already been cataloged. The Program has already had 14 graduates until 2019. In general, all graduates have already improved their career positioning (hiring, promotions, job changes). Approximately 20% of graduates decide to pursue a Ph.D. in sequence. As an indication of the quality of the work developed by the students of the Program, we can highlight the progress of these other graduates who have made significant use of their learning at MCIC, such as:
Flavio Matias Damasceno de Carvalho published, during his master’s period, more than ten scientific articles with qualis, having presented part of them in international conferences. His technical production, the result of his master’s dissertation, is published on the software page produced by the American psychologist James W. Pennebaker;
Rafael Guimarães Rodrigues defended his master’s thesis at 19 months, being the first student to defend his master’s degree at PPCIC. During his master’s degree, he obtained 12 scientific articles published in conferences with qualis and one article approved for publication in IEEE Latin America Transactions journal. In addition, he won the award for best article at KDMiLe 2017;
Raphael Silva de Abreu, who was awarded as the best dissertation of the 1st Thesis and Dissertation Contest of the XXV Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and Web Systems. Regarding his publications in the last three years, he has seven articles and h-index 2 in Scopus, which measures publications’ immediate impact;
Rebecca Pontes Salles started her doctorate at CEFET / RJ in the same year that she defended her dissertation (2019). His main articles published in the scope of his master’s degree have already reached h-index 3 in Scopus and Web of Science, which measures the immediate impact of his publications. It also made available the R package for prediction of time series (TSPred), which today has over 2000 downloads per month;
Wellington Souza Amaral, who in his working body (TCE), made possible the approval of a Project in the Research Notice of the School of Accounts and Management / TCE-RJ, Notice No. 01/2019 in the amount of R $ 30,000.00 for research in Data Science. This announcement formed a new link between TCE-RJ and CEFET / RJ, with the participation of professors Leonardo Lima and Eduardo Bezerra;
Among the 14 graduates, six received scholarships from the program, either with a CAPES scholarship or from a CEFET / RJ own resource. The average formation time of the scholarship holders is 28 months and, since joining the program, they have produced 21 scientific articles. Throughout 2020, another six scholarship holders are expected to form. There is an expectation of more than ten trainees throughout 2020, totaling around 24 graduates by the end of 2020. It should be noted that the MCIC (created in late 2016) started to flow in 2019, i.e., new students entering the Program, students in the middle of the research and students in conclusion. Thus, considering the average number of trainees in the years 2019 and 2020, the MCIC has a number of degrees compatible with the size of its faculty and the other Level 4 Programs.
Regarding knowledge production, the Program’s regulations require that Master’s students can only mark their boards for defense when they have qualified scientific articles or submit their potentially publishable articles for evaluation by the Program’s collegiate body. This translates into the high percentage of graduates with publication and the growing number of students with qualified production.
Finally, the interest in monitoring graduates is also included in institutional policy. Since 2017, the Strategic Management Directorate of CEFET/RJ has started a program to monitor the institution’s former students at the three levels of education (graduate, undergraduate and high school/technical), aiming to collect data and generate indicators about the destination graduates and their insertion and performance in the job market. Within this institutional program’s scope, several other actions are being planned so that the experiences of these graduates can be shared with current students.
It is worth mentioning that this program for monitoring graduates being implemented at CEFET / RJ was also the subject of a proposal submitted to the Public Call SETEC-MEC 01/2017 – Training in Innovation Management, having been well evaluated and selected by a committee composed of members from Steinbeis University Berlin – School of International Business and Entrepreneurship (Germany).
Another initiative in this regard is the participation of graduates in the workshops (WEIC) and seminars (SEIC) of the School of Informatics and Computing (EIC), organized by the teachers of the PPCIC. As of 2020, a period on the WEIC is set aside to commemorate the day of graduating from the MCIC.