Report on Undergraduate Forum of Feb. 22, 2005

The CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee (UGSC) organized the annual undergraduate forum on Feb. 22, '05 in DL 369. The forum started at about 6:00 pm and continued a bit past 8:00 pm, with most students staying on till the end. The summary below tries to describe the main points that were made during the discussions but it defintely does not capture the enthusiasm of the participants.

One problem this year was that the number of students at the forum was lower than in previous years. It was conjectured that this may have been because the forum was not sufficiently well publicized, the only announcements having been on the cis newsgroups. It was also suggested that in the future, it might be a good idea to have post hardcopy announcements on the building walls and possibly in some classrooms; and also to send emails to all majors and pre-majors a few days before the forum. In any case, thanks to all those who came to the forum and made it successful despite the somewhat low turnout.

On the positive side, we had a special guest, Gautam Reddy, Academic Relations Manager, Microsoft. Gautam attended the first few minutes of the forum and gave tips on how best to find good job and internship opportunities (see below for details).

Students:

Kyle Boon, CSE senior;

Joey Brinkmeyer, recent CSE grad;

Ted Han, CIS minor (major: Linguistics);

Grant Johnson, pre-CSE;

Donghwan Lee, pre-CIS;

Aaron Lint, CIS senior;

Michael McGrath, pre-CSE;

Warren Page, CSE senior;

Matt Schwaberow, CSE senior;

Stephen Sebeny, CSE senior;

Eugene Talagrand, CSE senior;

Guest: Gautam Reddy, Microsoft.

Faculty: Paolo Bucci, Eric Fosler-Lussier, Neelam Soundarajan, Bruce Weide, Stu Zweben (Dept. Chair).

Advising office: Ming Liu.

Staff: Tamera Cramer (Tamera took care of the pizza and pop; thanks, Tamera!)

1. Stu Zweben presented a brief summary of the "state of the department".
   • Stu stressed the importance, for their future careers, of students' interacting with faculty and trying to participate in various research/implementation projects that are being carried out in the department.
   • Stu noted that we have hired some well known faculty in such areas as networking and that these new faculty as well as current faculty provide a number of opportunities for exploring exciting areas both in core computer science and applications to other areas.
   • Students will benefit by attending talks presented by faculty (including, for example, the one that new faculty member Yusu Wang who will present a talk on 2/24).
   • Stu suggested it would be useful for students to consider doing a minor, along with their CIS/CSE major (more on this below).
   • Stu noted that the dept. has been active in addressing diversity-related issues. (See the department's diversity page.) Stu also mentioned the upcoming Ohio Celebration of Women In Computing (OCWIC) conference that the department is organizing and the recent column by Bettina Bair in the Columbus Dispatch on this topic.

2. Gautam Reddy (Microsoft Academic Relations) offered a number of comments about how students can make themselves more attractive to potential employers. Here is a summary of some of the points he made:
   • Try to obtain some knowledge of business principles and practices.
   • Load up on courses that involve a lot of design activities and projects (such as capstone courses).
   • Be active in student groups such as the ACM and IEEE student chapters, the NT group, the Open Source group, etc.
   • Internships can make a big difference; plus they can lead to permanent employment after graduation.
   • Try to develop a range of interests.
   • Perhaps most important: Be passionate about something. Many big employers such as Microsoft will often hire someone who may not happen to have specific technical knowledge if the person seems enthusiastic about whatever he or she is working on or is interested in.

3. Minors: There was a general discussion of the possibility (and importance) of CSE/CIS majors completing a minor in some appropriate area. The university has been trying to encourage students in all majors to also do a minor in some appropriate area as a way to broaden their knowledge and skills, and hence their appeal to potential employers. Thus, recently the College of Engineering decided that courses may be "double counted" between the major and the minor without any restrictions (other than that the courses in question be intellectually an appropriate part of the major and the minor in question). Thus, for example, a CSE major could pick up a Business Minor with a relatively small increase in the total number of credit hours (see below).
   But there was also some question about whether students will actually do this if it means having to stay in school for even one additional quarter. There was a feeling that many students are keen on finishing their program as soon as possible and graduating and that the potential benefits of completing a minor may not be sufficient to offset this consideration.
   One specific suggestion was to maintain information about various minors that might be of interest to CSE/CIS majors in an easily accessible location. Further, it might be useful to work out a few sample four-year schedules ("bingo sheets") showing how a student could complete the major as well as the minor without adding substantially to the time-to-graduation.

4. New/recent courses: A number of courses have been recently developed and/or are in varying stages of development:
   • 459.51: Perl
   • 494I: Information security
   • 694I/634: Computer vision
   • 694K: Network security
   • 694L: Scientific visualization
   • 694Z: Datamining
   • 732: Computational linguistics (revived, not new)
   • 767: OO design (etc.)
   • 794L: Speech processing
   Some of the students present had attended (or were currently attending) some of these courses, and had generally positive reactions to them.

5. General discussion concerning various courses: The previous topic led to a general discussion of courses, including in particular the transition from RESOLVE-C++ in the intro sequence to later courses.
   One comment was that although RESOLVE teaches important design principles, many students don't seem to apply them in later courses possibly because in these later courses, they use standard C++ (or Java), rather than RESOLVE-C++.
   A related point was that the 459 courses, especially 459.22 (on C++) and to a lesser extent 459.23 (Java), should help in the transition but usually do not since they spend a fair amount of time on basic OO ideas which are already part of the 221-sequence.
   It was mentioned that a recent section of 560 used a real machine (Intel x86) as the target, rather than an artificial architecture. This seemed to have worked well since students could see the complexities of an actual architecture instead of working with an artificially simplified one (on the flip side, the simulator portion of the project had to be replaced since, this being a real machine, there was no need for a simulator).
   Some specific suggestions were made:
   • Spend some reasonable amount of time, perhaps two weeks, in 321 on this question.
   • Introduce a new (3-credits?) course (between 321 and 560) that focuses on this question, via a few medium-size projects. (Response: This idea has been proposed previously but it has problems: it will increase the number of hours in the programs, plus the department may be hard pressed for resources to staff the course since it will presumably be required of all students. On the other hand, an elective course offered perhaps once a year might be worth considering.)
   • Change the 459's to 2-credits so that there is adequate time to address this question. (Response: This too has the resource problem associated with it.)
   • Change the 459's, in particular 459.22 (C++) so that it focuses on this question.
   • On a different note: Consider offering 727 at least once every other year for the students interested in advanced theory.

6. Prerequisite for CSE 221: There was a brief discussion of whether the prerequisites for admission to 221 were appropriate. There was a comment that a score of 3 on the AP Computer Science exam was not really a good score and that a student with such a score cannot be assumed, at least not on the basis of just that score, to be capable of handling 221. There was also a comment that the placement exam that lets students test out of 201/202 and into 221 is perhaps a bit too simple and needs to be beefed up. (Response: Bruce promised to look into this.)

7. Recent and possible future changes in the programs:
   • The Math 254 (5 credits) requirement in the CIS program has been replaced by Math 566 (3 credits) and 2 hours of technical electives.
     (One problem with this change was that Stat 427/428 -which is required in the CIS program- had Math 254 as prerequisite; we have worked with the Statistics Dept. to change that to Math 153, so CIS majors should be able to take Stat 427 after completing Math 153.
     Another problem is that Math 568 lists Math 254 as prerequisite; although Math 568 is not required for CIS majors, it is a prerequisite for some computer graphics courses; we are currently working with the Math Dept. to see if the 254 prerequisite for Math 568 can be modified so the course remains accessible to CIS majors.)
   • A proposal has been made to include JCom 321 (Effective public speaking, 5 credits) as a general education requirement for CSE majors. This proposal has been approved by the College of Engineering and is under consideration by the university Council on Academic Affairs (CAA).
   • A proposal has been made to allow CSE majors to count any one of the five courses in the Business Minor as part of their tech electives. This proposal is also under consideration by CAA.
     There is a parallel proposal that the College of Engineering has made for some changes in the GEC courses that the college requires of all engineering majors. If that proposal is approved, there will be room in the general education hours for a business course. In that case, the business course will be counted as part of the general education hours in the CSE program and will be required of all CSE majors.
   This led to a general discussion of whether a single course on public speaking or a single business course would really be of any value. One response was that a single business course is not going to make you an expert but gives you an introduction to the field, and exposes you to key terms in the field, so it becomes easier for you to pick up more on your own later on. Similarly, the public speaking course won't transform you into an expert speaker but it provides techniques that can be used in the future, as well as a forum to practice in front of a decent sized group.