Computer Science @ CofC

Vanathi Vignesh has been awarded a full-ride scholarship to attend the 2011 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Portland, Oregon for five days. She was selected from a competitive pool of applicants.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering.

Congratulations Vanathi!

What is your major? If you want to work at Facebook, you’ll need to major in computer science.

For several years, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that computer science and other software-oriented jobs will dominate the top 10 jobs list in the United States. We are now seeing the reality of those predictions and they are even better than expected, even during what is a tough economy for other majors on the College of Charleston campus.

Computer Science at the College of Charleston has 229 majors as of July 2011, up from 68 in 2006. In the last year alone, the enrollment into Computer Programming I is up approximately 25% over Fall 2010.

Senior exit data from computer science majors in May 2011 indicate that job offers and starting salaries have never been hotter in Charleston and around the country. Computer Science majors at the College of Charleston now work at many companies including Blackbaud, Benefit Focus, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Automated Trading Desk, eThority and hundreds of other amazing companies. Many graduates also have excellent career positions in the Department of Defense and other national security agencies.

A recent article in the Software Development Times describes well how software development is a cross-cutting competency applicable to all industries (and governments) and it not pegged to any particular industry. Reference: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/35710

The Computer Science department offers four distinct programs: Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Discovery Informatics and Computing in the Arts.

The Computer Science Department hosted the Best Buy’s Geek Squad Summer Academy on June 23-24, 2011. With 125 girls in attendance, the camp was aimed at igniting their interest and confidence in technology. The curriculum included fun and interactive classes in PC Hardware, Digital Video, Digital Photography, and Digital Music. The success of the event was evident by hearing some of the students explain elements of what they learned during the camp.

The College community provided extraordinary support to the Summer Academy. The event occurred in an atmosphere comparable a “mini campus” with over 10 classrooms and facilities utilized. Bringing extra comfort to the sultry Lowcountry days, the Office of Admissions contributed cool drinks throughout the event. Members of the Library staff provided hands-on support on both days. The Physical Plant, Public Safety, IT, Registrar’s Office, Upward Bound, Student Affairs, Media Relations, and Mail Services are some of the other departments that helped to make the occasion comfortable and welcoming for the 9 to 18 year-old girls. At the end of the sessions, Christine Moore, of Computer Science, expressed words of encouragement to the participants. Debbie Counts, from the Office of Admissions, briefly addressed the girls about preparing for college and invited them to explore opportunities at the College of Charleston.

The Summer Academy was sponsored by Best Buy Geek Squad and Junior Girls Day Out Community Project.

The Computer Science Department hosted the first “Biz Apps” Technology and Entrepreneurship Camp for 14 middle and high school students from June 6-June 23, 2011 in the Software Innovations Lab.

Joshua Wooten and Joshua Moser, Computer Science majors at the College of Charleston, taught the students how to create basic Android mobile applications for their business ventures. During the camp the students learnt how to start their own businesses from Lancie Affonso, the founder of NetGen Consulting, a non-profit that provides entrepreneurship training programs for youth entrepreneurs (and CS students who are interested in starting their own technology ventures:)

The business plan competition was hosted by the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship and the camp was sponsored by Motley Rice LLC and YEScarolina.

Thomas Zalonis has been awarded a Doctoral Fellowship to pursue his Ph.D. studies in Computer Science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. This fellowship is awarded to only a few of the top Ph.D. students. It comes with a full tuition waiver and a stipend to allow graduate students to focus on their classes and research.

Thomas received both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from our department. Additionally, he has done research in machine learning and music information retrieval funded by the National Science Foundation (with Dr. Bill Manaris). Thomas has attended two research conferences (ISMIR-2008 in Philadelphia, and IASA-2009 in Athens, Greece), and has three research publications to his credit.

Thomas will begin his Ph.D. studies in August.

The number of computer science majors tipped 200 in Spring 2011. The size of the graduating class continues to rise with 26 graduating in 2010-2011 academic year. The new major, Computing in the Arts, is expected to add an additional 50 majors over the next five years.
Pictured are the three Outstanding Computer Science Majors for 2010-2011. From left to right they are Perry Spyropoulos, Chris Starr (CS chairman), Stephanie Cary, Mike Auerbach (SSM Dean) and Steven Dix.

When is it right to include computational thinking into a general education program in higher education? When we all fully understand it? No. When we can most afford it? No. When it does not cause academic turf warfare? Not really. It’s only when we are ready to graduate students who are better prepared to succeed through an understanding of and the facility with abstraction, information and processes, which have come to define and influence their personal and professional lives.

Conversations are happening over computational thinking (Jannette Wing 2006) on college and high school campuses. Some traction is developing, but there is still a chasm of ignorance between the computing community, which can get excited over problem solving through computational thinking, and colleagues in other disciplines who still view computing today as if it were 1990…you know, the if-only-my-students-knew-formulas-in-Excel faculty members.

Looking at the College of Charleston’s General Education program, reading, writing and math stand prominently, echoing the traditional educational triad well into the 21st century. While the three Rs remain foundational, I argue that computational thinking, represented by a fourth R, algorithms, is a new leg upon which liberally educated people must stand in this century. (Tony Hey, Microsoft Research 2009) Or is it simply asking too much of universities?

In the mean time, computer scientists, a group that already studies reading, writing, math, history, language, philosophy, and the arts, will continue to be singularly well educated. We have already emerged as a population (Richard Florida 2004) who are best positioned to succeed in a world in which we increasingly draw value and power from information and processes. And we are progressing at speeds that boggle human understanding and may soon exceed it.

In the short term, we have much to gain by keeping the traditionally educated population ignorant. When people get hungry for managing complexity, for understanding how to solve problems computationally, and for digitally implementing ideas that can transform scientific, social, political and economic spaces in time frames with shorter and shorter half-lives, let them run Excel. In the mean time, let’s relax. Let’s keep the computational key until someone is keen to notice.

Student researchers from CIRDLES, I-Lab, and MusicLab gathered with Dr. Bowring and Dr. Starr for a roundtable discussion over pizza at Andolini’s on Friday, 28 Jan. The lively discussions prompted plans for future gatherings.

What happens when students graduate from the College of Charleston (and many other universities in the US) unprepared to engage in a world that is changing faster than they have learned to adapt? They remain blissfully unaware. Fully incognizant of their deficiency, some will wonder why they cannot get a job, move between jobs or keep a job. Few will take the red pill and move through a world in which they will have a chance to affect.

Graduates at large cannot think computationally or recognize computational issues including managing complexity and change. The problem is a curriculum that has not changed enough. The curriculum deficiency starts in K12. We still expect high school students to take multiple years of mathematics but not even a day of computer science. Even worse, high school students in the Charleston County School District at least are required to complete DIT (Digital Input Technologies), aka keyboarding for those of you with college degrees who don’t even know enough to parse the official title. A notable exception is Porter Gaud School’s computer science curriculum in Charleston, SC.

Problem solving, abstractions, and symbolic manipulation may be better learned through a computer science curriculum and within a computational context. Without a computer science course covering computational issues of mind and machines, we graduate students from high school with a middle school preparation for the world of college and work. Likewise few undergraduates programs in the United States state learning outcomes for computational and informational proficiency, including computational thinking. Princeton University’s General Education Program is a notable exception.

Until there is a general education goal for computation/computational thinking or the recognition that computer science is also well positioned to deliver quantitative literacy along side traditional (and nearly unchanging) mathematics, better students will not waiting for a requirement.

You are educated.  How could you not compute?