UGCC Report, 11/29/05 Committee: Bettati, Gutierrez, Keyser, Jiheon Kwan (undergrad rep), Leyk, Loguinov, Petersen, Welch (chair) Meetings: Fridays 2-3 PM Charge to the committee: Revise the undergraduate computer science curriculum, taking into account what was developed last year by the UGCC and the feedback from the 2004 and 2005 faculty retreats. Target: Have a proposal to present to the faculty in the spring 2006 semester, with some of the new courses in place by fall 2006.

Overview of Years 1 and 2 Need a major reorganization –how integrated should the new courses be? Push more CS material here –students more competitive for internships after sophomore year –allow advanced courses to start at a higher level –facilitate a "track" system –necessitate moving some non-CS required courses later Considering a seminar course early on –intro to department/profession –internship and research opportunities "Programming studio" course would serve as a lower-level capstone course

Overview of Years 3 and 4 Track system (several have already been proposed by UGCC and in retreat reports) Add a capstone course –research experience could substitute for the capstone course as in computer engineering

Tentative Year 1 Fall Seminar course –intro to department facilities and faculty –intro to computer science –intern and research opportunities CS Sequence 1 "Intro to Programming & S/W Development" –fundamental programming constructs –algorithms and problem solving –fundamental data structures –recursion –overview of programming languages –software design –using APIs

Tentative Year 1 Spring CS Sequence 2 "Data Structures and Algorithms" –basic algorithmic analysis –algorithmic strategies (greedy, etc.) –fundamental algorithms (divide carefully between here and an upper-level algorithms course)

Tentative Year 2 Fall Discrete Structures (or move into Year 1?) –functions, relations, sets, basic logic –proof techniques –induction –basic automata theory –basic computability CS Sequence 3 "Computer Organization" –digital logic and digital systems –machine level representation of data –assembly level machine organization –memory system organization and architecture –overview of compilers?

Tentative Year 2 Spring CS Sequence 4 "Introduction to Computer Systems" –overview of operating systems –operating system principles (divide carefully between here and an upper-level OS course) –intro to net-centric computing –high-level overview of communication and networking –high-level overview of database systems Programming Studio –more software design –more using APIs –software tools and environments –software processes –intro to software requirements and specifications

Still To Do Refine plan for first two years: –what programming language(s) to use and in which order? –what to do about circuit design? –etc. Tackle last two years: –effects on upper level courses of changes to lower level courses (particularly, algorithms, architecture, operating systems) –what should the tracks be? –what advanced courses should be mandatory? –keep supporting area? –etc.

Sources Computing Curricula 2001 Computer Science Final Report, The Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, IEEE Computer Society, ACM Web sites of various other computer science departments. The University of Illinois Department of Computer Science recently revised their curriculum along similar lines to those we've been discussing:

Meeting with Undergrads Tonight, 6-7 PM, 124 Bright Give them a short overview of what we've been talking about Get their input –verbal –written survey (see handout for a draft)

Announcement The UGCC has voted to change the prerequisite for CPSC 481 from "senior classification" to "CPSC 311 or CPSC 321 or ELEN 350 or permission of instructor". Purpose is to get some of the information regarding job hunting, graduate school, research opportunities, etc. to the students a little earlier, while still waiting until they have had at least one serious upper-level computer science course.