A New Paltz Education
11/09/2011
Every student should take away at least two things from his or her college education - knowledge and skills.
Knowledge
An education needs to provide knowledge because once you graduate the next phase of your education begins – the self-learner phase. This is particularly true in Computer Science. There are many jobs available for Computer Science graduates and they are relatively high paying. They are also relatively hard to keep. To keep those jobs you need to keep up with the latest technology and much of that work you need to do on your own, learning the newest tools or techniques in your spare time. A Computer Science major needs to provide you with enough fundamental knowledge so that the life-long, self-learner part of your education will be less of a struggle; better yet, a natural thing to do. If I can give an example; a recent graduate of ours was telling me that while at work one Friday, his boss told him that on the following Monday morning he had to be able to start working with a new technology. Our student went to Barnes & Noble after work, bought a 500 page book and read it over the weekend. He was able to do this productively because the foundational Computer Science knowledge he received in his degree studies made it easier to do the reading.
Skills
While studying Computer Science you also need to develop skills such as problem-solving skills as well as communication and teamwork/leadership skills. Most job postings talk about “prior experience”. It isn't so much the experience that employers want but the skills that come with that experience. We can't provide you with the a job experience bullet for your resume but we can see that you get a chance, while studying with us, to practice as many of these job-related skills as possible.
The Computer Science major at New Paltz contains a comprehensive, required core of Computer Science courses that prepares every graduate to be self-learner. The optional component of our major includes a project course in which students work on real problems, often as interns in local companies. In many other courses of our major, large programming projects are an important component.
