The pathway below represents an efficient and effective course taking sequence for this program. Individual circumstances might require some changes to this pathway. It is always recommended that you meet with an academic counselor to develop a personalized educational plan.
The courses have been intentionally placed and should be prioritized in
the order
in which they appear. If you are unable to take all the courses in
a semester, you
should prioritize enrolling in the courses in the order below.
Some courses have
been noted as “Appropriate for Intersession” 
. Should you need (or want) to take
classes
in the summer and/or winter intersessions,
the program recommends these courses as appropriate for the condensed
schedule of
the intersessions.
Some pathways combine a “Certificate of Achievement” and an “Associate
Degree”. If
you are pursuing only the Certificate of Achievement, you are only
required to take
the courses marked “Program Requirement” 
.
All pathways include at least one “Gateway Course” 
which introduces you to the program and/or field of study and helps you
decide if you want to continue with this Academic and Career Path.
Most Associate degrees (though not Associate Degrees for Transfer)
require satisfying the SMC Global Citizenship requirement. If the Program
Requirements do not include a “Global Citizenship course” 
, be sure to select a General Education course that also satisfies Global Citizenship.
This program provides students with the industry skills to understand, build and maintain applications for the cloud. These skills include the technical principles of the hardware and software requirements to run systems in the cloud including storage, database management, and software systems, while maintaining secure access.
Upon completion of the program, students will:
- Upon completion of the program, students will demonstrate a high level of competency in the different operational levels of cloud computing, such as storage and software as a service, while applying security standards to their operation.
Icon Key
-
Gateway Course
-
Program Requirement
-
General Education -
Appropriate for
Intersession
-
Available Online -
Global Citizenship
Semester 1
15 Units
This is a beginning course intended for students who plan to take additional computer science courses. The course covers an introduction to programming concepts such as designing, coding and testing. Other concepts such as computer hardware, operating systems, compilers and databases are also discussed. The Internet and an introduction to cybersecurity and cloud computing are also included.
This course offers a broad introduction to networking concepts and analyzes different network architectures. Introductory topics include network topologies, media and signaling, protocols, addressing, and distributed networks. The varied ways to connect computers are explored as are the resulting architectures. The course explores subnetting, both physical and virtual and internetworks are constructed in the lab. Server programs are introduced to demonstrate their signature socket-API structure. Specific real-world services such as the apache web server, BIND name server, NFS and Samba file system servers, DHCP address server, and others are discussed.
- Skills Advisory: One programming course.
This introductory course in rhetoric emphasizes clear, effective written communication and preparation of the research paper.
- Prerequisite: ENGL 21B or
- Prerequisite: ENGL 22
- Prerequisite: ESL 19B or
- Prerequisite: Group A on the Placement Test
- 1A: English Composition
- A2 - Written Communication
- Area IV-A: Language and Rationality (Group A)
This course provides an exploration of intellectual, psychological, social and physical factors that impact lifelong learning, well-being and success. Topics include motivation and self-efficacy; critical thinking, academic integrity and active study strategies; health issues and lifestyle choices; relating to others as a global citizen; written and oral communication; time management; career exploration; and educational planning.
- E - Lifelong Understanding and Self-Development
SMC GE Area II-B Course 3 units
Semester 2
15-17 Units
This course covers the basic technologies used to program Web-based applications. Topics include: HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), XML and JavaScript, along with a basic survey of the latest extensions on JS.
This course is an Advisory for CS 81
- Skills Advisory: CS 3
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
This course introduces cloud computing which shifts information systems from on-premises computing infrastructure to highly scalable internet architectures. The course provides a solid foundation of cloud computing technologies and provides students with the understanding required to effectively evaluate and assess the business and technical benefits of cloud computing and cloud applications. Students analyze a variety of cloud services (storage, servers and software applications) and cloud providers. Case studies will be used to examine various industry cloud practices and applications. The course also surveys cloud careers and discusses industry demand for cloud skills.
- Prerequisite: CS 3
This course introduces the Python programming language. Students will learn how to write programs dealing in a wide range of application domains. Topics covered include the language syntax, IDE, control flow, strings, I/O, classes and regular expressions. Students may use either a PC (Windows) or a Mac (Linux) to complete their programming assignments.
- Skills Advisory: CS 3
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
SMC GE Area IV-B Course 3-5 units
Elective Course 3 units
Semester 3
15 Units
This introductory programming course teaches the fundamentals of computer programming with the JavaScript language, the standard for client-side Web programming. It offers a thorough treatment of programming concepts with programs that yield visible or audible results in Web pages and Web-based applications. It shows how to use Core and Client-Side JavaScript and the Document Object Model to build interactive, high-performance Web sites.
- Skills Advisory: CS 80
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
This is a foundation course in the Linux operating. Booting a Linux machine is dissected, from BIOS firmware to authenticated user shell. Use of shell commands, editors, programming tools, and GUIs are emphasized. Students learn to write shell script programs and install applications using the open source software distribution model. Unix process creation is detailed and a 20-line tutorial shell is developed. Local administration tasks are covered, including user account management, backup, task scheduling, logging, and clock time synchronization. As time allows recompilation of the kernel from source code will be performed.
- Skills Advisory: CS 50
This course provides students with the knowledge necessary to understand and identify the tasks involved in supporting Microsoft Windows Networking Operating Systems. It covers topics such as installing and configuring Windows Servers to create File, Print, Web, and Terminal servers, and manage and support a network infrastructure that uses the Microsoft Windows Server products. The course also focuses on Windows Active Directory services, implementing Group Policy and performing the Group Policy related tasks that are required to centrally manage users and computers.
- Skills Advisory: CS 70
This course addresses cloud database management which supports a number of different approaches for storing data. In the course, students define, operate and scale both SQL and noSQL data storage solutions. This course considers factors that should be balanced during the design of a storage solution. Principles are applied by performing exercises using Amazon RDS and SQL to create and fill tables, retrieve and manipulate data. Object-based APIs are used to serialize objects to Amazon DynamoDB for noSQL solutions. Topics include automated backups, transaction logs, restoration and retention.
AWS Track
- Prerequisite: CS 79A
C # (read as C-Sharp) is a modern object-oriented language that enables programmers to quickly build solutions for the Microsoft.NET platform. In this class, programmers will learn to build C# components for use by Web and Windows-based applications. Students will generate MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) code and PE (Portable Executable) files that utilize the services of the CLR (Common Language Runtime) which are all part of the Microsoft.NET platform.
Azure Track
- Skills Advisory: CS 19 or
- Skills Advisory: CS 50
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
In this course, students explore how cloud computing systems are built using a common set of core technologies, algorithms, and design principles centered around distributed systems. Students will use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Management Console to provision, load-balance and scale their applications using the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and the AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The course discusses, from a developer perspective, the most important reasons for using AWS and examines the underlying design principles of scalable cloud applications.
AWS Track
- Prerequisite: CS 79A and
- Prerequisite: CS 55 or
- Prerequisite: CS 87A or
- Prerequisite: CS 83R or
- Prerequisite: CS 85
In this course, students will gain the skillset needed to implement Infrastructure as a Service on the Azure cloud platform. The course will cover how to assess and plan a cloud migration from on premises infrastructure to Azure. Students will learn how to manage Azure resources, including deployment and configuration of virtual machines, virtual networks, storage accounts, and Azure active directory services to manage user and groups. Students will also learn how to manage a pool of nodes using batch jobs.
Azure Track
- Skills Advisory: CS 79A
ENGL 2 recommended for transfer options
See the full list: SMC GE Area III Course
Semester 4
15-17 Units
This course focuses on protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computing systems and data.Students learn how Amazon Web Service (AWS) uses redundant and layered controls, continuous validation and testing, and a substantial amount of automation to ensure the underlying infrastructure is continuously monitored and protected. Students examine the AWS Shared Responsibility Model and access the AWS Management Console to learn more about security tools and features provided by the AWS platform.
AWS Track
- Prerequisite: CS 79A
In this course, students will learn to deploy relational and non-relational databases in Azure. Students will define, operate and scale both SQL and noSQL data storage solutions. Principles are applied by performing exercises using the Azure SQL Database service as well as Azure Storage Explorer. Students will store, manage and analyze data in all the different storage options offered in Azure including blob storage, file storage, table storage, queue storage, Cognos DB and Azure Data Lakes.
Azure Track
- Skills Advisory: CS 79A
- Skills Advisory: CS 79Z
In this advanced course, students will learn how to use the AWS Well-Architected framework that has been developed as a guideline to cloud architects to implement the most secure, high-performing, resilient and efficient infrastructure possible for their applications. Using case studies and class projects, students will apply the five pillars of operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency and cost optimization on AWS architected infrastructures.
- Skills Advisory: CS 79C and
- Skills Advisory: CS 79D
Java is a general-purpose language for writing platform-independent, robust, secure programs. This course is intended for students who have completed a course in C programming. Students will learn how to develop Java applications and applets. Topics covered include the Java programming language, object-oriented programming (OOP), the Java applications programming interface (API), and graphical user interfaces (GUI's).
- Skills Advisory: CS 19 or
- Skills Advisory: CS 50
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
This course will cover how business decisions can be made into machine learning problems for deeper business insight. We will cover the terms and concepts required to help you learn and build a good foundational understanding of machine learning, artificial intelligence and deep learning. You will learn the various Amazon Web Services Machine Learning stack, Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning services, using application use cases, frameworks and infrastructure that will allow us to build, train, and deploy learning models at scale. Data is a vital part of machine learning, we will cover how business data is stored, moved and processed throughout the machine learning pipeline.
- Skills Advisory: CS 79A
Server-side Web programming allows programmers to create content and process data supplied in Web forms to create websites. These applications process data submitted from Web forms and access backend databases to dynamically generate Web pages. Students will design and write web pages using ASP 2.0 (Active Server Pages), Visual Studio. NET and the C# programming language.
- Skills Advisory: CS 33
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
This course teaches how to design and write applications utilizing Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework based on the Ruby programming language. In this course, students will create applications that gather information from a web server, query databases and render results.
- Skills Advisory: CS 60 and
- Skills Advisory: CS 80 and
- Skills Advisory: CS 15 or
- Skills Advisory: CS 52 or
- Skills Advisory: CS 53A or
- Skills Advisory: CS 55
- Area IV-B: Language and Rationality (Group B) Option 2
