Computer Science curriculum change

By Jennifer Shen     11/18/10 6:00pm

The Computer Science Department announced its new curriculum that will officially take effect for the class of 2015. Major changes in the new curriculum include a new introductory course sequence, removal of the previously required discrete math course and more consistency in programming languages taught.Computer Science Department Chair Joe Warren said the success of COMP 140 following its introduction three years ago motivated the change in curriculum. Rather than only focusing on learning a programming language, COMP 140 provides more hands-on problems, such as music processing and network analysis on Facebook, as initiatives to building programming techniques.

Warren said that for the past year, Computer Science Professor Scott Rixner has put a lot of effort into unifying the department by producing a coordinated plan that will hopefully build on the successes of COMP 140.

"[COMP 140] has been an extremely popular class, and we want to keep people excited as they go through the major while maintaining the quality of the education," Rixner said.

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According to Warren, a main motivation for creating this new curriculum is to bring up the number of computer science majors, which has gone down since the Dotcom Crash in 2000.

"The curriculum we built in the '90s was designed when [.] everyone was coming out and saying 'I want to be a computer science major,'" Warren said. "The major we had got very technical very quickly and we didn't have a lot about why you were doing it."

Warren said since many computer science majors lose interest halfway through the curriculum, the new curriculum will try to attract more majors by making the introductory sequence more interesting and by getting more of the best professors to teach lower-division classes. The department hopes to increase the number of computer science majors from 15 to around 40.

Starting this spring, a new course, COMP 182, will be offered to follow COMP 140 and replace COMP 211. Rather than going on to Java for COMP 211 from Python in COMP 140, the department hopes to create a more integrated introductory sequence with COMP 140 and COMP 182.

"COMP 182 is going to follow on COMP 140 hopefully by keeping some of the aspects that people really like about COMP 140, where we look at real-life problems, and it will dive deeper into the algorithms behind the large problems," Rixner said.

Hanszen College sophomore Tyler Siegert said the reputation of COMP 211 warranted the coming curricular changes.

"I have heard nothing but bad things and horror stories about COMP 211, so I am glad that it is being removed and a new approach is being added," Siegert said. "I know of a few people who actually changed majors after taking COMP 211."

Computer Science Professor Luay Nakhleh, who has won several teaching awards, including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, will be teaching COMP 182 as part of the effort of bringing great professors to teach freshmen and sophomores.

According to Rixner, another focus for the new curriculum is the consistency of programming languages. Freshmen will program primarily in Python and sophomores in Java, while C will still be introduced in the second semester of sophomore year.

Other changes in the new curriculum include new courses on Java programming, COMP 215, and parallel programming, COMP 322, originally a graduate-level course.

Will Rice College junior Dennis Qian said he was previously going to have to take parallel programming at a graduate level, and that he is glad that he will be able to do so at the undergraduate level with the introduction of COMP 322.

In addition, computer science majors will only have to take either differential equations or multivariable calculus rather than both. Discrete math, COMP 280, will no longer be offered. The material of discrete math will be spread throughout the curriculum.

"[This way, students] get to see it in the context of how it's used, rather than just have one class that teaches all the discrete math concepts without really showing how it's used by computer scientists," Rixner said.

Current freshmen and sophomores can graduate under either the old or new curricula, but they are strongly encouraged to take advantage of the new one. Juniors and seniors are mostly unaffected.

Since there are not enough faculty to continue teaching all of the old courses that are being replaced, the department is making a few old and new courses interchangeable for satisfying major requirements for students who are still graduating under the old requirements.

Another new course on object-oriented programming, COMP 310, was introduced this year and will become part of the new curriculum. On the other hand, COMP 314, Applied Algorithms and Data Structures, will be removed.

"I'm glad that our curriculum is pressing the important computer science concepts early to get students in the right mindset for computational thinking," Qian said. "COMP 314, however, was a valuable self-discovery course that I hope would return to the curriculum someday.

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