New Vision for the Computer Science Major
05/03/2010
The Computer Science major offered by the Department of Computer Science is undergoing big changes. We want you, our students and prospective students, to feel that these new course offerings will accomplish two things – give you the proper preparation to become a computer professional and give you the chance to explore new areas of computing and have fun while you are at it.
Although the total number of Computer Science credits remains the same at 40 we have moved the credits around, dropped old courses and created some new ones.
The gatekeeper courses to our program continue to be two introductory programming courses – CS I and CS II – that cover topics from problem solving to standard data structures.
Next we have 7 required courses that are paired up in a recommended order in which they should be taken (see the above diagram). These courses cover the core of what any Computer Science curriculum should cover. Topics covered in these core courses include computer organization, operating systems, computer architecture, compilers, object-oriented programming and software engineering.
Finally we ask our students to delve more deeply into one or more applied topics and take a sequence of courses in topics ranging from the traditional database and networking areas to the cutting edge in web technologies, software development for mobile phones, robotics and gaming.
As part of this “delving” students will be encouraged to take on internships in which they can earn credits towards graduation. While the major only requires that students take one sequence (7 credits) students will be encouraged to take more than one sequence and to work on programming projects that cut across the boundaries of two or more sequences.
