Report on Undergraduate Forum of Feb. 20, 2007

The CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee (UGSC) organized the annual undergraduate forum on Feb. 20, '07 in DL 305. The forum started at about 6:00 pm and continued till about 8:00 pm, with most students staying on till near 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. (It is probably worth noting that the turnout was substantially more than had been expected; as a result, we ran out of pizza and pop; apologies to all those who did not get any pizza and/or pop! We will be sure to order adequate amounts of refreshments for future meetings of this kind.)

Attendees:

Students:: Shain Bergman, senior;; Terrence Lee, sophomore;; Nima Falaki, senior;; Nick Fontanini, senior;; Matt Nedrich, senior;; Anthony Rickelman, junior;; Keith Finney, sophomore;; Deepak Bal, senior;; Tim Sprague, senior;; Matt Yoho, senior;; Georgi Viznyuk, sophomore;; Nathan Schey, senior;; Tim Callahan, senior;; Bina Patel, sophomore;; Tobias Gordon, junior;; Paul Betts, senior;; Jason Karns, senior;; Andy Vulhop, senior;; Binaebi Akah, senior;; Linda Wang, junior;; Farhad Salehi, junior;; David Brentlinger, junior;; Daniel Wagers, junior;; Jon Mazala, sophomore;; Mike McGrath, senior;; Brandon Mintern, senior.
Alums:: Robert Weekley, BS-CSE alum (year?).
Faculty: Paolo Bucci, Paul Sivilotti, Neelam Soundarajan, Bruce Weide, Xiaodong Zhang.
Advising Office: Peg Steele.
Systems Staff: Michael Compton, Mike Ruiz.

Summary:

Xiaodong Zhang made a few general remarks. He noted that the job market for computing graduates seems to be recovering and that our grads have been getting reasonable offers. He also noted that OSU is becoming very selective and the perceived value of a degree from OSU has been going up steadily.
Changes and developments in CIS and CSE programs: Neelam Soundarajan summarized some recent changes in the undergraduate programs. The results of the accreditation evaluation of the BS-CSE program which took place during Au '05 became available in Au '06. The program came through with flying colors in the evaluations by both the Engineering Accreditation Commission and the Computing Accreditation Commission. The recent changes in the program, in particular the introduction of new activities and assessment rubrics in the capstone courses (and CSE 601) and POCAT (Program Outcomes Achievement Test), the new "exit test" for graduating BS-CSE majors, were essential in the program's meeting the accreditation requirements; hence these activities will continue.
The two new technical elective options, individualized option and information and computation assurance (ICA) have gone through all levels of approvals in the university and are now available to both BS-CSE and BS-CIS majors.
The individualized option allows a student to tailor, in close consultation with the faculty advisor, his or her technical electives to pursue specific interests that may not fall under any of the existing tech elective options. The ICA option allows students to focus on security-related issues. Full details of both options are available at the undergraduate program web pages.
New courses: One interesting course, being offered in Spring '07, is 694G, Game Design and Development project. This is intended to be the pilot for a permanent course on the topic. The course is expected to be a capstone design course for the BS-CSE program. The course will integrate ideas from computer graphics and AI in the context of designing and implementing interesting games. As in other capstone design courses, this will be organized around a major design project; it will also include the other standard activities of the capstone design courses.
A second important course which is in the early stages of discussion (no definite plans to pilot it have yet been developed) is related to CSE 560. CSE 560 is, of course, one of the most important courses in both BS-CIS and BS-CSE programs. It has generally been very successful. Even though students often complain bitterly about the course and the workload when they are in the course, we often hear from graduates that, in retrospect, that it really helped them mature as computing professionals. At the same time, the fact that students have not before been exposed to tools such as CVS that they have to use in the course, have not before designed and implemented from scratch even moderately large-size programs, and many students have very little facility with any language other than RESOLVE/C++, all contribute to some important difficulties in the course for both instructors and students.
Paul Sivilotti (who is the coordinator for 560) summarized these issues and then outlined a possible new course (tentatively numbered CSE 322) that might be developed to address some of these concerns. The prerequisite for this course would be CSE 222 and students would typically take the course at the same time as CSE 321 (thus ensuring that the time to graduation is not be increased). The course would use Java but the focus would not be on the language but on such issues as best practices in developing code, common problems that developers encounter in designing and building medium and large-size systems, use of tools such as CVS, etc.
These ideas were well received but there are a number of questions that have to be considered before a pilot can be offered. First, we cannot increase the number of hours in the CIS or CSE programs so where do we cut hours that can be used for this course? A natural possibility would be to reduce 560 hours from 5 to 4. Another hour might be available by possibly eliminating the requirement that students take a 459 course; such a change might be appropriate since 322 would be in Java and the 221-sequence would still use RESOLVE/C++ so students would see at least two distinct high-level languages before they get to the 600-level courses. At least one additional hour would have to be identified. There is also the problem that CSE 560 serves as the third writing course. If the changes being considered here, including that of reducing it to 4 hours, are put into effect, would it still be able to serve that purpose? Paul and others, including the Curriculum Committee, will consider these questions and see what action would be most appropriate. Any comments on this should be sent to Paul (paolo AT cse).
Bruce Weide mentioned that two new courses (CSE 203, 204) have been developed that would be of interest to non-majors since they introduce computational thinking in the context of interactive animations & games and digital images & sound respectively. Students at the forum were urged to recommend these courses to their friends, especially those who are intimidated by computers since these courses will help them develop a good basic understanding of computing principles and make them comfortable with using computers.
Communicating with students: Ensuring effective communications between faculty, students and staff is obviously essential. Unfortunately, over the last several years, students seem to have become less informed about the activities and initiatives in the dept. One important reason for this is that fewer students seem to read the electronic newsgroups which, historically, have been among the most effective means of communications in the dept. Various possibilities such as wiki's and blog's and even MySpace were suggested as possible alternatives but it is not clear that any of these is practical. This problem needs further investigation --perhaps by the Computer Committee-- to identify suitable solutions. (During the discussion, it seemed that some students did not even read messages sent to their CSE and/or OSU e-mail addresses; after the forum, investigation by the SOC Lab staff showed that some mailing lists had not been set up properly with the result that some students may not have received some announcements including, in all likelihood, announcements about the forum! The problem has now been fixed.)
Changes in facilities: Michael Compton described some recent changes in the lab facilities. Perhaps the most important one is the creation of the 24-hour space for both CIS and CSE majors in DL 172. Although the room could use some additional furniture, students had very positive comments about the room. Michael promised to keep working on improving facilities for undergraduate majors (subject to budget and space constraints that are not under our control).
Student organizations: Representatives from the Open Source group (Paul Betts), the ACM-W group (Linda Wang), and the ACM group (Nima Falaki) talked briefly about their respective organizations. Students are urged to join in the activities of these organizations. Not only are they interesting and challenging, these activities also provide an opportunity to interact with the broader computing community via professional conferences, programming contests, etc. Employers often look for evidence of such activities in their potential recruits.