Computer Science Action Plan

Since December, 2001 we have been making a serious assessment effort, to get feedback from our recent alumni and their employers, as well as our graduating class. This effort is to make further improvements in our work, particularly, our teaching, as part of our preparation for the Spring~03 external review, and for possible accreditation.

The Department Assessment Committee, consisting of Drs. Charles Brown, Zhizhang Shen, and Evelyn Stiller, and chaired by Evelyn, has since studied these returns, and written a report to the CS faculty. The Computer Science Faculty discussed this report in the last two meetings, and finally voted to accept it in a revised form on April 10, 2002.

Based on the findings, the Assessment Committee made eight items of recommendation. The CS faculty discussed them excitedly, and have made suggestions as how to implement them as follows:

1. IT curriculum review: In our three year plan, which I submitted to you in early Fall 01, we have already arranged a curriculum review for our IT major during Spring 04.
2. Database course review:  We have completely revised the objectives, as well as the content, of this course, in Fall 00. Now, this course is a concept oriented course, with a significant practical component.
3. Project management:  We have already included this component in some of our courses, such as CS372 System Analysis and CS414 Software Engineering. We are still working on this item to further augment the exposure of our students to this very important subject.
4. Professional ethics and social responsibility:  This has become a hot issue in computer science education, and has received a very worthy attention in the newly released Computing Curriculum 01. Currently, we have two courses covering it, CS452 Science, Technology and Society and CS442 Computer Security. Neither of them are required for our ACS majors, while the second is required for our IT majors. We are discussing this issue in the current round of curriculum review as how to further add more material under this subject when credits allow.
5. Course on C/C++: We have since developed such a course, CS247 Systems Programming in C/C++ (2 credits). This course has been approved by the Curriculum Committee on November 15, 2002, and will be offered for the first time in Spring 2005.
6. Internship:  We have since worked out joint ventures with various divisions of ITS such as Computer Shop, Help Desk, TelComm, to provide opportunities to our students to take internship there. So far, six students have participated this program. We have also made contact with outside companies to explore such opportunities. For example, we recently sent a student for an interview in Sybase Co., a major database development company.
7. Interview coach:  We have contacted the Career Development Office to get some professional help. We understand that although they don't offer workshops for a group of students, they do provide help on an individual basis. We will certainly share this news with our graduating students.
8. Course scheduling:  We discussed various ways to advise our students so that they can graduate in a more timely manner. For example, currently, many of the advisors will not only check out students' scheduling for the next semester, they will also take a more global point of view by doing multiple year scheduling. We have since streamlined our scheduling, and made adjustments accordingly. Now, all the required courses are offered at least once a year. As a result, if a PSU student comes into the program at the beginning of the second year, he/she will be able to graduate within 8 semesters.

All of us feel that this assessment is a very worthy effort, from which we have learned quite a bit. This practice will certainly help us to further improve our future work.