Report on Undergraduate Forum of Feb. 21, 2008

The CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee (UGSC) organized the annual undergraduate forum on Feb. 21, '08 in DL 305. The forum started at about 5:30 pm and continued till about 7:10 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.

Students:

Farhad Salehi, senior;

Eric Witte, junior;

Kevin Brohaugh, sophomore;

Nikhil Gudikandula, senior;

Binaebi Akah, senior;

Deven Garrett, junior;

Johvary Ruiz, junior;

David Weinberg, senior;

Ray Gerard, senior;

Alan Delong, senior;

Andy Pyles, junior;

Steve Kemery, senior;

Nick Fontanini, senior;

Peter Dietz, senior;

Ali Rahimi, senior;

Alums:

Robert Weekley, BS-CSE alum;

Derek Bronish, BS-CSE alum;

Adam Champion, BS-CSE alum;

Faculty: Paolo Bucci, Roger Crawfis, David Mathias, Rajiv Ramnath, Paul Sivilotti, Neelam Soundarajan, Dong Xuan, Xiaodong Zhang.

Advising Office: Jason Sawin, Peg Steele, Nikki Strader.

Systems Staff: Michael Compton.

1. Everyone in the room briefly introduced themselves.

2. Xiaodong Zhang made a few general remarks. He noted that OSU is becoming very selective and the perceived value of a degree from OSU has been going up steadily. He also noted that the job market for computing graduates seems to be recovering and that our grads have been getting reasonable offers. Nikki Strader mentioned that our recent grads seem to be getting average offers of about $50K (annual salary) and that the gap in this between BS-CIS versus BS-CSE majors seems to have all but disappeared.

3. Recent/upcoming changes in CIS and CSE programs: Neelam Soundarajan summarized some recent and upcoming changes in the undergraduate programs.
   1. Following changes in the GEC requirements for students in both in the College of Engineering and in the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, we have proposed some changes in both the BS-CSE and BS-CIS programs. These are described in detail in the minutes of the Undergrad Studies Committee meetings. Briefly, the requirements for the BS-CSE program would go down by one course, with a reduction in the total number of credit hours for the program from the current 196 hours to 191 hours. The GEC requirements/free electives for the BS-CIS program would go down by a total of 15 hours; the technical portion of the program will increase by 5 hours (a capstone design course (4 hours) and CSE 601 (1 hour) will both be required); the total number of hours for the program will go down from 191 hours to 181 hours. The BA-CIS program will remain mostly unchanged, except that CSE 601 will become a required course instead of being an elective. These revised requirements will apply to students who joined OSU in Au '07 (or later). Current students who wish to follow the new programs may petition the respective colleges (not the CSE Dept).
   2. There is a new program, NEWPATH available to both CIS and CSE majors interested in entreprenuership. This NSF-supported program is demanding and rewarding. For full details, please see http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/ugrad/newpathhome.shtml.

4. New courses:
   1. A new course, Game Design and Development Project, has been piloted successfully a couple of times. It will become a permanent course (CSE 786) and has been approved as a capstone design course. The course integrates 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.
   2. Project course on computer security: A new course organized around a set of projects involving security-related issues has been developed. It was piloted in Au '07 (CSE 694X) and was very successful. Dong Xuan, one of the instructors for the course, briefly summarized the course and also gave an overview of the set of courses related to information security and networking. The course will be offered again as a pilot and is then expected to become a permanent course.
   3. Software development in Java: A new course using Java but focusing not 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. has been piloted a couple of times. The course has been very well received by students and is expected to become a permanent course. Questions about changes in other related courses (such as 560, 321, 655 etc.) remain to be addressed. As was noted at the last forum, this course is expected to become a prerequisite for CSE 560.

5. Comments on existing courses: There were a few comments on some current courses. There was a suggestion that it would be useful to include, in the documentation, informal explanations of some of the formal specifications used in the 221-222-321 sequence. There was some concern that while this sounds sensible, such informal explanations often become too large to be of much use.
   There were some comments about CSE 757, the course on software engineering. Some students felt that some of the material in the course was not particularly useful and, moreover, the amount of work required (in certain sections of the course) was too much considering that it was a 3-credit course. On the other hand, some students seemed to feel that the course material, presenting, as it does, a somewhat non-technical view of the topic, was indeed quite useful since all the other courses tend to focus exclusively on technical issues. Faculty who teach the course regularly (Paolo Bucci and Rajiv Ramnath) noted that the course tries to do a number of very different things: present a historical overview of the field's evolution; present recent developments; present some of the non-technical considerations (such as the management of software development) that have to be considered in practice; prepare students for CSE 758, the capstone course on software engineering. This naturally affects the way the course is taught. The faculty are exploring ways to improve the course.

6. Computing facilities: Michael Compton summarized the status of the computing facilities. The 24-hour space for both CIS and CSE majors in DL 172 seems to be running well. Michael mentioned that the dept. has a number of used PCs (and CRT monitors) that will soon be made available for purchase by people (students/staff/faculty) in the dept. The money raised will be used for supporting students' computing facilities.

7. Consultant training: One of the students who is also a consultant suggested that it would be useful if, whenever faculty start using a new tool (such as Eclipse or JUnit) in their classes, the approrpriate consultants were provided some training in the use of the tool. One possibility might be for the faculty in question to arrange a half- or one-hour session at the start of the quarter for this purpose; and continue this for two or three quarters until students who have taken the particular course start working as consultants.

8. Student organizations: Representatives from the Open Source group (Peter Dietz), the ACM-W (Binaebi Akah), and the ACM student chanpter (Farhad Salehi) talked briefly about their respective organizations. These organizations are currently quite active; 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. NTSig seems to be dormant; students interested in Windows-related activities are encouraged to reactivate it. Employers often look for evidence of such activities in their potential recruits. One problem that was mentioned was that there is no single, good collection of links to various organizations. Farhad (who is a student rep on both the Undergraduate Committee and the Curriculum Comm. will work with Neelam to explore how this requirement may be met.)

9. Scholarship applications: Scholarship applications are due March 3. Students interested in applying should check with the Advising Office.