Computer Science

Mission

The department of Computer Science at Slippery Rock University is committed to providing all-around and in-depth education to its majors, qualifying them for a wide range of careers in computing and/or advanced study in computer-related fields. To fulfill its commitment the curriculum emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving and enhances the student's teamwork skills, communication skills, and sense of professional ethics in computer science.

Careers

Since the beginning of the computer revolution a few decades ago, there has been a strong demand for computer programmers in the job market. More recently, growth in computer and communication technologies and their applications has been vigorous, resulting in a wide range of computer-related skills needed by business, industry and government. Today computer science graduates can find jobs as systems and application programmers, systems analysts/managers, network specialists, database experts, customer support personnel, technical writers and independent consultants to name a few. According to the published reports, the demand for computer scientists for the foreseeable future ranks extremely high around all disciplines. Our graduates have enjoyed excellent job placement. A strong undergraduate degree in computer science, computer engineering, telecommunications and management informations systems provides tremendous job opportunities.

Department

The Department of Computer Science is a part of the College of Business, Information, and Social Sciences. All twelve faculty members of the department are experienced and highly qualified to teach the undergraduate program in computer science, with eleven of the faculty holding doctoral degrees. While the primary goal the faculty members pursue is excellence in teaching, their research and scholarly interests play an important role in keeping our curricula on the cutting edge of the discipline and provide research opportunities to interested students majoring in computer science. Scholarly research is currently conducted and partially funded by several local, state, and national agencies in the areas of robotics/artifical intelligence, parallel computing, and program optimization. Availability of instructors outside the classroom for additional help, small class size, one-on-one academic advising and strong faculty support for student activities are among the major strengths of the department.

Student Activities

The department supports student activities in many ways. Faculty members are actively interested in functions sponsored by the Computer Technology Club. Every major in the department is automatically a member of the club. The department has a chaper of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, a national honor society in computing. All students are encouraged to join the Association of Computing Machinery, the best-known international professional organization in computing. Every year the department sponsors teams for participation in at least two programming contests, one held by the ACM and the other by the Pennsylvania Association for Computer and Information Sciences Educators during professional meetings. Students are also encouraged to present papers at PACISE meetings.

Computing Facilities

The deparment maintains five computer laboratories exclusively for the use of students in major courses. The laboratories are equipped with UNIX X-Window workstations, Workstations running the Windows XP operating system, a B-12 mobile robot, a vision system and robotic arms, and servers and workstations for hands-on training in computer networking. All software used in course work is available in these labs and also in some other campus labs. The university provides full Internet access to all students. In addition, the department allows each major to maintain his/her own World Wide Web page for academic purposes. Students are not required to own a computer.

The Computer Science program is accredited by the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org

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