I've decided to go back to school and finally finish an Undergraduate's degree. I've been accepted to WGU's College of Information Technology and plan on getting their B.S. in Software Development. The curriculum will include the Network+, Security+, Project+, Oracle Certified Associate Java SE 7 Programmer, and Oracle Certified Professional Java SE 7 Programmer certifications. While I could really care less about the certifications, it is a nice add-on at no additional cost. I'm mostly doing this out of personal interest and to fill in any holes that might exist in my experience; but I also believe it will be directly beneficial in my current position and future prospects. I like the idea of building a DevOps-like skillset and being able to do both development and infrastructure management.
I'm currently working as a SysAdmin for a small (but growing) engineering firm. We get the opportunity to work on a lot of really interesting projects for a wide range of clientele. (Mechanical/Electrical/Software Engineering working with robotics, wireless proximity detection systems, high speed cameras, etc...) Aside from managing the infrastructure I hope to have the opportunity to directly contribute to some of the future projects that involve software development. I've already been given the opportunity to build a small one-off tool in BASH that replaced an older slightly dated piece of software that was being used for managing an aspect of an ongoing project. I really enjoyed the work and it was part of what pushed me to go ahead and enroll for the WGU program.
I enjoy working with BASH and use if fairly regularly for writing scripts. I also have a little experience working with Python. I'll be picking up Java from my future studies, and I plan on adding in Ruby/Rails as I find time.
What else would you recommend that might be helpful when moving forward with courses that are specific to programming/development? Thoughts on the curriculum? How about additional skills to look into picking up along the way for career development? Depending on how these courses go I may move more toward the software development side of things and less toward systems administration in the future. Are there any other things I should be doing now or in the near future that might be beneficial?
(I thought about putting this in the Careers forum, but thought this might be slightly more relevant home. If I'm wrong please feel free to move it)
TL;DR: I'm going back to school for software development and I am looking for informed criticism of the degree program I've chosen, advice on other skills to look into for career development, and/or any other helpful criticism/commentary.