EDUCATION: Laredo Public Health collaborates with TAMIU engineering students
By Alyssa Medina
Assistant Editor
Published Tuesday, April 15, 2025
This spring, software engineering students partnered with the City of Laredo Public Health Department to create software solutions for real-world community issues.
Texas A&M International University Associate Professor of computer science and engineering Mustafa Al Lail examined the initial objective of the year-long software development projects for the course. From his prior teaching experience at another university, he recalls the efforts of his former students who worked alongside professional IT companies for his course then. Continuing this effort, he chose to carry forward the same goal to encourage his TAMIU students to participate in hands-on experience in real-world implications.
Associate Professor Mustafa Al Lail, center of front row, stands with TAMIU students, faculty, administrators and Laredo Public Health Department representatives for a photo to celebrate their new engineering partnership in this submitted photo dated Feb. 11.
This aligns with TAMIU’s emphasis on experiential learning, as part of the new focus of the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan.
“In 2019, I wanted to do the same thing because it is a really good experience for students to get real-life experience working on real software projects,” Al Lail recalled. “The assistant director of the department gave a presentation on how this project will help the community and students will slowly learn to understand the impact of their work on the society.”
Al Lail listed seven software projects, including Vital Records Index and Community Resources Finder. His initial objective was to implement these projects so his students would face real-life community problems.
Software engineering students Martin Perez and Victorugo Melo defined their group’s main goal for the project. As part of their projects, the students worked on various projects; their main role focused on event management and feedback, as well as creating the Vital Records Index for the department.
When it came to challenges during the project, Perez said he’s still new to software development and learned multiple skills in collaboration and professional feedback from their public health partners.
“I’ve never created a web page before and with this project, I actually did and connected it to an actual database,” Martin said. “I’m learning this new database; so, if any future employers would want to work with that database, I would easily be able to.”
Melo also learned skills and received guidance during the project.
“They’ve influenced [me] in a positive way because they gave us guidance and feedback on our software,” Melo said. “Things I’ve learned from this project were technical and behavioral skills when it came to collaborating with our teammates.”
In the near future, students expect to work on more software projects through QEP’s core of experiential learning, which should further enhance their practical and technical experience in the software engineering industry.
