Computer Science Instruction and CS&E Education

The current and predicted future increase in demand for computer science education, driven by student and industry needs, still exceeds the increase in supplied teaching resources, both from a faculty and an instructional laboratory perspective. The Committee is aware of the recent efforts of the campus to help reduce this problem by allocating additional resources to Computer Science. Unfortunately, the UC Davis student populace is still experiencing difficulties in enrolling in certain Computer Science courses that are in very high demand. While the Committee realizes that this is a major reason to call for the expansion of computational-oriented education in all departments throughout campus, the Committee strongly believes that core computer science training is, and should remain, the responsibility of the Computer Science Department. The Committee is of the opinion that the establishment of a CS&E unit could help reduce, at least to some degree, the demands on Computer Science and, at the same time, prepare students with a potentially stronger emphasis on the applications of computational methods. It must be ensured that the potential implementation of a new CS&E unit--with its educational mission being the delivery of computational methods courses--does not duplicate efforts of Computer Science. There exists a strong industry need for core computer science education that emphasizes--and Computer Science is the appropriate place to provide this type of education. To meet the demand for core computer science education, it has been suggested to expand resources in departments other than Computer Science. The Committee believes that this would not be in the interest of students and not in the interest of the campus as a whole. It is more appropriate to focus on the quality of computer science instruction, to leave core computer science education as Computer Science's obligation, and to meet the increasing demand for computer science instruction by supporting Computer Science directly, and by favoring a CS&E hiring process that would attract CS&E hires who would be qualified for and interested in contributing to core computer science teaching. CS&E faculty candidates with dual interests and backgrounds in non-computer science disciplines as well as computer science should also be considered favorably for future hiring. They could equally contribute to both delivery of computer science courses and CS&E courses. This approach would also take into account that Computer Science is housed in Engineering, while half of its students are in another college. Dual appointments of CS&E-focused faculty members between Computer Science and another department would allow multiple departments to grow and would help reduce the strain put on computer science education. Computer Science is open to expansion in application-oriented directions favoring faculty candidates with a strong CS&E interest.