Development of a CS&E Curriculum

CS&E educational efforts should have a student's interest at heart, i.e., the main emphasis should lie on the preparation of a competitive student who understands fundamental CS&E methods, knows how to apply these methods to a particular application area, and is competent to generalize or adapt these methods to practical computational problems encountered in applications in one's future career. A CS&E curriculum and ``typical'' CS&E courses must be fundamentally different from a computer science or computer engineering curriculum and computer science or computer engineering courses. We outline various aspects in the following. The Committee anticipates that there will be a need for CS&E education beyond science and engineering. It can be foreseen that even students in such diverse fields as art, management, and economics will become more and more interested in enrolling in undergraduate CS&E courses and pursuing a minor degree in CS&E. There are several undergraduate and graduate programs that could be supported by CS&E faculty members. Some possibilities are outlined below, keeping in mind that the actual curriculum would be designed by the CS&E faculty after it is formally organized.

• Undergraduate Minor. Based on discussions with numerous faculty, it is evident that a need for an undergraduate minor in CS&E exists on campus today. The undergraduate component of CS&E development must address this need, and the goal should be the creation of such a minor. It is clear that the need for a minor in CS&E exists throughout the science and engineering disciplines--and other fields should follow soon. The set of courses that students with a minor in CS&E would have to take would initially be developed and administered, possibly, by the Program in CS&E and later by a potentially independent Division for CS&E. The Program or Division would be coordinating courses that apply to a broad spectrum of applications. A total of about 20 to 24 credit hours constitutes a minor. The set of courses defining a potential CS&E minor would be defined by CS&E faculty in consultation with the departments whose students would most likely take advantage of the CS&E minor. Departments with an interest in seeing their students minoring in CS&E should allow and prepare for changes in their respective curricula. In this context, it would be very important that the affected departments would be open to the idea of having CS&E become the primary home for the preparation of their students in computational methods. This is an attractive possibility and is likely to be popular with physical science, biological science, earth and environmental science, and engineering majors, as well as selected social science majors. We envision a two- or three-course introductory sequence to be taken by sophomores or juniors that would introduce computational methods and theory applicable in a variety of areas. Unlike the computer science introductory curriculum, there would be an equal concentration on floating-point problems as well as integer problems, but with a rigorous foundation in the theory of algorithms. The total course requirements might be six courses; the remaining three or four courses would be chosen from a list containing courses taught by CS&E faculty in several departments. Prerequisites would again be determined by the CS&E faculty. Clearly this would include mathematics at least through calculus, and probably also linear algebra, differential equations, and vector analysis. Some knowledge of programming would be required, but the exact prerequisite computer science courses need to be specified; it might include a data structures course and algorithms course, or both. This would be co-determined with the computer science content of the core sequence, so that students would have an adequate conceptual background in computer science for the remainder of the curriculum. It is very likely and desirable that discrete mathematics will play a significant role as well.
• Masters Program. The organization and development of the graduate curriculum would be the responsibility of the CS&E Graduate Group. To facilitate curricular development the Chair of the Graduate Group would, in close consultation with other campus units, define a Masters program in CS&E or an area of emphasis in CS&E. A Masters Program would be conducted by a graduate group and would focus on students with a background in science or engineering who wish to pursue a computationally oriented career but whose undergraduate background is not yet sufficient. The potential topics would be similar to those for the undergraduate minor, but the coursework would be more extensive and the majority of it would be offered at the graduate level. Students would be expected to have a greater background in mathematics and computer science than for the undergraduate minor, and students would need to make up these courses if they were admitted without having taken them. To attract students to the Program, it would be crucial to keep prerequisites concerning mathematics and computer science courses minimal.
• ``Graduate'' Area of Emphasis. This would be a kind of mixture between the previous two programs. The coursework would be at the graduate level, but would not be as extensive as for a Masters degree. It is not clear what the demand for this option might be, but it could be implemented with very few if any additional courses than those required for the first two options.
• PhD Program. This would be an objective for the longer term. A Graduate Group established for the Masters Program and the area of emphasis could develop a PhD program provided that there is student interest and a demonstrated need for the graduates.
• Courses. Courses would be selected from existing graduate courses, and new courses would be developed by new and current faculty. Courses would be cross-listed. Besides any introductory sequence, the hiring of a substantial number of CS&E faculty will result in many new courses, many of broad interest to students in a variety of graduate and undergraduate programs. What these courses would be depends on specific recruitments, but some possible areas would be the ones listed in section 4.3 under Fields Targeted for CS&E Recruitment.