At the Crossroads of Traditional Computing and Applied Computing Adrienne Critcher1 Krishna Agarwal2 John Sigle3 Dave Foley4 Computer Science Department, Louisiana State University in Shreveport Shreveport, LA 71115 Abstract For the last two decades the Computer Science Department at Louisiana State University in Shreveport has offered a traditional undergraduate program, producing hundreds of highly qualified graduates who have achieved successful professional careers in the field of computing. During this time, the field of computing has been evolving at a frantic pace. The demand for instruction and training, at several levels in our field, presents an enormous opportunity for universities. Our current programs meet some of this demand, but leave a large part of it unserved. In short, much of the expertise in demand today in the computing field is of a technical and applied nature in such areas as networking and Web-based e-commerce. Our current traditional Computer Science degree, which is focused on the theory and foundations of algorithms and programming, is of a somewhat different nature. We would like to add a new applied computing degree and retain our traditional accredited degree. However, we simply do not have the faculty, or the university resources to obtain needed faculty, to support both programs. In the face of declining state support of public education, we are struggling with our subsequent decision and proposal to our administration to discontinue our current traditional program in favor of a more applied program. We suspect that we are not alone among Computer Science Departments in trying to resolve similar curriculum issues. Keywords: Curriculum Issues, Applied Computing, IT, Computer Science, CSAB-accreditation 1. INTRODUCTION For the last two decades the Computer Science Department at Louisiana State University in Shreveport (LSUS) has offered a traditional undergraduate program, producing hundreds of highly qualified graduates who have achieved successful professional careers in the field of computing. In addition, for the past twelve years, our Master of Science in Systems Technology (MSST) has been a successful and popular professional graduate program. The field of computing has been evolving at a frantic pace since the proliferation of personal computers and the popularization of the Internet. The demand for instruction and training, at several levels in this field, presents an enormous opportunity for universities. Our current programs meet some of this demand, but leave a large part of it unserved. In short, much of the expertise in demand today in the computing field is of a technical and applied nature in such areas as networking and Web-based e-commerce. Our current traditional Computer Science degree, which is focused on the theory and foundations of algorithms and programming, is of a somewhat different nature. We sought to remedy this situation two years ago by proposing the addition of an applied computing degree. Unfortunately, faced with an extreme scarcity of funds, our university administration was unwilling to commit the needed resources for this endeavor. Because we felt strongly that an important opportunity was being missed, we recently submitted a modified proposal for addressing this unserved demand. We (quite reluctantly) proposed to our (acting) dean the elimination of our current accredited undergraduate program in favor of an applied computing program. This approach would allow greater flexibility of requirements and offerings, and would make it possible to serve a broader spectrum of students. This new degree would be structured as a set of core courses and a number of tracks in specialized areas. One of these tracks would be structured to provide (at least some of) the theory and foundations of algorithms and programming as in our current degree. Furthermore, an effort would be made to align the new program with our popular MSST program, which is already largely applied in nature. Our department is at a crossroads. We would prefer to add a new applied computing degree and retain our traditional accredited degree. However, we simply do not have the faculty, or the university resources to obtain needed faculty, to support both programs. In the face of declining state support of public education, we struggle with our decision and subsequent proposal to discontinue our current traditional program in favor of a more applied program. We suspect that we are not alone among Computer Science Departments in trying to resolve similar curriculum issues. In the paper that follows, we discuss the background of our university and department, the rationale for our proposal to move from a traditional accredited program to an applied program, and a comparison of our current program and the proposed applied program. 2. BRIEF BACKGROUND OF THE UNIVERSITY LSUS has an enrollment of approximately 4,000 students. As a "commuter" school we receive most of our students from area high schools, community colleges, local college graduates seeking second degrees, and local workers seeking professional development. Many of our students are first-generation college students who have significant commitments to jobs and family in addition to their university work. Many hold full-time jobs yet also consider themselves full-time students. The average age of our students is 26, and the average ACT score for incoming freshmen is 20. Our community has a significant minority population, and LSUS has made a concerted effort to attract more minorities over the past decade. We have increased our minority enrollment from 16% in 1989 to almost 25% currently. The enrollment at LSUS has remained fairly static during that same period. 3. HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT The teaching of computer science at LSUS originated in the Mathematics Department. The B.S. in Computer Science was introduced in the late 70's. A separate Computer Science Department was formed in the mid 80's. Our enrollment peaked at about 500 students in 1985. By 1987 we had 8 faculty and 400 undergraduate students. We were graduating approximately 50 students a year. In 1988 we began a Master's degree program in Computer Systems Technology, which soon graduated a dozen students a year. Beginning in the late 80's, in accordance with national trends, we experienced a decline in enrollment ending in the mid 90's with a low of approximately 127 majors. With the pervasive influence of the Internet, our enrollment has steadily increased since 1995 to 200 majors currently. We have had from 7 to 44 graduates per year (ten year average of 20). At present we have four full-time faculty (one of whom is on sabbatical for a year), 200 undergraduate majors, and 60 graduate students. We have a high attrition rate for our first-year programming students, retaining only 33% of them. We now graduate around fifteen undergraduate students and ten graduate students each year. Due to budget constraints, in recent years it has become the practice at LSUS to combine related departments and to increasingly rely on adjunct faculty when full-time faculty members retire or resign. This practice has left our department with only three full-time faculty members for the academic year 2001-2002. Because of the dramatic reduction in the size of our faculty, our department has just recently been combined with the Mathematics Department and placed under the leadership of the new chair of that department. The new chair of the Mathematics Department has strong interests in computing and much practical experience with networks, and he is enthusiastic about rebuilding our department with an emphasis on applied computing. The Computer Systems Technology Master's degree program, which began in 1988, has had a relatively stable enrollment of 50 to 60 students and is currently attracting much interest. This program graduates eight to fifteen students per year (ten year average of twelve). We believe that an applied computing program at the undergraduate level would better support this graduate program, which is itself of an applied nature. In fact, if the applied computing program is implemented at the undergraduate level, we anticipate making subsequent modifications to the graduate program so that it will be natural for our undergraduates to continue on in our graduate program. We also believe that we could then better aggressively market the graduate program to community professionals in need of current technological skills. Coincidentally, at the same time that computer science programs nationwide were experiencing declines in enrollment, our department decided to seek accreditation for the B.S. degree from the CSAB (Computing Sciences Accreditation Board, Inc.). Our program has been accredited since 1991. The department has been proud of its accredited program. The ability of a small, under-funded school like ours to offer an accredited program is a tribute, we believe, to the quality and dedication of the computer science faculty. Accreditation for a school like ours has offered an advantage to our students in securing good jobs because it has validated the quality of our program. Our graduates have secured highly technical positions with major companies. The accredited program is very demanding however, requiring not only those computer science courses taken by students at traditional computer science programs throughout the nation, but also requiring a substantial number of mathematics and science courses. We have found that the quality of our students over the past years has declined sharply and steadily. Possible reasons include: * the TOPS program in Louisiana which provides a state tuition scholarship for students who follow a prescribed high-school curriculum, score 21 on the ACT, and have a 2.5 GPA. Many students who previously could not afford to leave Shreveport to attend college can now do so, leaving the place-bound and less-qualified students to attend LSUS. In addition, the weak requirements of TOPS may send the wrong message to high school students that they are adequately prepared for college. Over half of TOPS students lose their scholarships after their freshman year. * high rate of child poverty in Louisiana. 20% of Louisiana's children live in poverty, the highest rate in the nation. For these reasons, and perhaps others, fewer and fewer of our students are capable of the rigors of our accredited program. At the same time, changes in the field of computing have resulted in many job opportunities for students with less rigorous training. Hence given the kinds of students who now attend our university and the demands of the computing industry for IT (Information Technology) workers, it seems a good time to shift the paradigm for computing at LSUS from a traditional CS program to an applied program. Our department would prefer to offer both a traditional program and an applied program, but that would require more resources than the university has been willing, or able, to commit. Our current faculty members are well prepared to continue offering the traditional program. It has produced outstanding graduates, and it currently has 200 majors. But departmental surveys indicate that approximately 75% of our current majors would welcome a change to an applied computing program. If we discontinue the traditional program, we will still have an obligation to ensure that our remaining traditional majors can complete the program that they started. In the design of our applied program (described later) we have tried to offer several tracks in order to be able to appeal to students with a wide range of technological abilities and interests. While the primary thrust of an applied computing degree would be to make our major more accessible to our typical student, we still hope to be able to attract and interest students who would have preferred our current traditional program. 4. RATIONALE FOR AN APPLIED PROGRAM This new program is needed because of the sudden and astonishing growth of the Internet and the commercial opportunities that it presents. The degree will provide opportunities for students without software engineering orientations. It focuses on the understanding and use of technologies and applications that are widely used in the computing and networking fields. It has much fewer mathematics and science requirements than our traditional degree. This degree will offer local students an alternative career path that is in great demand by local industry. The degree will prepare workers who will be focused on critical commercial software packages and their applications. Employers want networks installed or upgraded; they want web sites created and maintained; they want employees who can interact with commercial database packages and enterprise software systems; they want employees with hardware and advanced manufacturing knowledge that can be utilized to reduce production costs in this highly competitive global market. By offering this degree, LSUS will be attracting new students to IT and diversifying the pool of technical skills and interests in our region. We strongly believe that we can increase the retention rate of our first-year students (currently only 33%) with this new degree. The reasons for achieving greater retention under the new program are (1) fewer math and science requirements, (2) introduction of programming much later in the curriculum, (3) lower level freshmen and sophomore courses which offer a good foundation in computing fundamentals (students will be able to test out of some of these courses), and (4) a curriculum which is more career-driven. In summary, the reasons for offering an applied computing program are: * The current traditional program is too rigorous and theoretical for most of our students. * There is a much greater demand for IT workers than for traditional computer scientists in the regional area LSUS serves. * An applied undergraduate program would directly support our applied graduate program. With an applied undergraduate program, we should expect our graduate program to grow substantially and to contribute to the economic development of our region. 5. PRESENT CURRICULA VS. PROPOSED CURRICULA The CSAB curriculum is a traditional computer science curriculum that allows students to pursue either a computer science career or graduate work in computer science. Our particular CSAB program is oriented more towards career-seeking students rather than those continuing towards a graduate degree. Within this context we have endeavored to blend computer science principles and fundamentals with current practices. Because the curriculum involves a substantial amount of software development, the ability to think algorithmically is very important. This ability is still very important in many aspects of the computing field. However, the computing field has seen major changes, which have changed the nature of computing in some fundamental ways. Whereas in the past, it was important for a computer science major to be able to develop software systems "from scratch", it is now the case that most software systems are too large to be developed from scratch or even completely understood by any single individual. It is now perhaps as important, or even more important, for our students to develop the abilities to interface ("put together") different pieces of software, which have been developed separately and possibly using different standards, to form a large software system. In addition, because of the explosive growth of the computer industry, there are many jobs for IT workers that do not involve software development, such as network administration, personal computer consulting, and multimedia development. We have also experienced a clear trend that a smaller and smaller percentage of our students is willing and able to master the existing curriculum. Because of the pervasive use of the Internet, our students' focus has shifted towards applied computing. That is the reason that in 1998 we proposed an additional bachelor's degree in Applied Computing that we thought was more in line with the career goals of many of our students. This proposal was shaped by a survey of our current students. This degree program was to be offered in addition to our CSAB degree. We submitted a Letter of Intent to our Board of Regents that was critiqued by an outside consultant. A primary concern of the consultant was inadequate faculty resources for an additional program. After discussions with our administration we determined that insufficient resources were available to support two undergraduate programs and a graduate program. So at this point we are reluctantly proposing to replace our CSAB degree with an Applied Computing degree. Accreditation rules also affect mathematics and science requirements. CSAB accreditation requires our students to take 14 hours of science courses (for the science major, with labs) and 17 hours of mathematics courses. The new curriculum would require only the university's General Education Requirements in mathematics (six hours) and science (nine hours of general science courses with no labs). Present Course Offerings Courses currently taught on a regular basis are listed below. Our full-time CS faculty teach these courses with help from two faculty members from other departments and four adjunct faculty. In general, 100-level courses denote freshman courses, 200-level denote sophomore courses, etc. 400/600-level courses can be taken by both seniors and graduate students. 700-level courses are for graduate students only. CSC 101: Intro. to the Internet CSC 105: Intro. to Computer-based Multimedia CSC 111: Intro. to Computing CSC 112: Structured Programming (using C++) CSC 212: Advanced Programming (using C++) CSC 242: Computer Architecture and Organization CSC 242L: Computer Hardware Lab CSC 275: Object-Oriented Pgmming. Using Java CSC 282: Systems Programming I CSC 345: Data Structures and Algorithms I CSC 346: Data Structures and Algorithms II CSC 382: Systems Programming II CSC 405/605: Programming Language Concepts CSC 410/610: Industrial Robotics CSC 415/615: Intro. To Database Management CSC 430/630: Computer Networks CSC 433/633: Maintaining and Administering a Network Operating System CSC 455/655: CAD/CAM CSC 460/660: Rapid Applications Development CSC 470/670: Artificial Intelligence CSC 480/680: Software Engineering Concepts CSC 481/681: Software Engineering Project CST 701: Computer System Organization CST 703: Data Models CST 707: Data Modeling and Database Design CST 715: Concurrency, Recovery and Security CST 717: Decision Support Tools CST 730: Systems Administration CST 741: Models in Decision Making The Proposed Curriculum The proposed curriculum would consist of a core of five courses augmented by six tracks. Students would complete two of the following tracks: 1. Computer Networking. 2. Web Applications. 3. Robotics. 4. Database management. 5. Software design. 6. Hardware. The core courses would be: CS1: Basic Computing Skills CS2: Standard Computing Applications CS3: Introduction to the Internet CS4: Introduction to Program Design CS5: Computer Organization Courses in the tracks would be: 1. Computer Networking. a. Introduction to Data Communications b. Computer Networks c. Network Operating Systems 2. Web Applications. a. Introduction to Web Design b. Java Programming c. Web Applications 3. Robotics. a. Robotics I b. Robotics II (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) c. Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing 4. Database Design. a. Data Structures b. Database Design I c. Database Design II 5. Software Design. a. Data Structures b. Object Oriented Programming in C++ c. Java Programming d. Rapid Applications Development (using Visual Basic) e. Software Engineering 6. Hardware. a. Hardware I b. Hardware II c. Hardware III Synergies Between the Current and the Proposed Curricula Coursework: The Software track weakly approximates our current curriculum. The following courses which we now teach at least once a year would no longer be offered: CSC 242 (Computer Architecture and Organization) and 242L (Computer Hardware Lab); 345 and 346 (Data Structures and Algorithms I and II); 282 and 382 (Systems Programming I and II); 405 (Programming Language Concepts); and 480 and 481 (Software Engineering Concepts and Project). In addition, several of our 400-level electives would no longer be taught. Faculty: No current faculty has expertise in Website development, management and e-commerce. Just this past summer we lost a faculty member (to another university) who was our robotics specialist. So our robotics track is no longer covered. We anticipate the areas of Web Design, Networking, and Database Management to be the most sought-after areas in the job market and hence the most popular tracks among our students. These tracks will therefore represent the primary thrust of this proposed curriculum. Hence, it is essential that we have sufficient faculty in each of these three tracks. The current faculty has sufficient expertise, or can reasonably be expected to acquire such expertise, to cover the core courses. However, depending on enrollment levels, additional faculty may be required for even the core courses. Honoring Our Commitment to the Current Curriculum: One logistical problem is that we must honor our commitment to the students currently enrolled in our CSAB curriculum. Even if we eliminate the CSAB degree immediately, we will be required to keep teaching many of the courses in the current curriculum for approximately three more years. While in some cases we may be able to utilize some of our new courses to satisfy requirements of the old curriculum, in many other cases, we will not be able to do so. 6. ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSE Our administration has been slow to act in response to our proposal, even though they have voiced strong support for it. In fact, our administrators probably have no misgivings about replacing our CSAB-accredited traditional program with an applied program, but several significant organizational changes have recently taken place that have been distracting. Our department has been merged with the Mathematics Department under its new chair. The acting dean of the College of Sciences was appointed in late spring as the permanent dean. Both our new chair and new dean have voiced strong support for rebuilding our department. 7. CONCLUSIONS Our department has tried to take a proactive stance with respect to the evolving state of the computer industry by offering new courses in emerging areas (e.g., telecommunications, networks, and robotics), by updating current courses to teach the most widely used programming languages in industry (Visual Basic, C++, Java), by securing grant money for new labs and lab assistants, and by carefully and thoughtfully proposing a new major in Applied Computing. Since it became clear that additional support for this new major would not be forthcoming from our administration due to severe state budget problems, we have reluctantly proposed eliminating our current traditional computing major in favor of an applied computing major. Because of the nature of our university, we believe that we can better serve our students and our community by this move, but it is still difficult to give up a program that we believe has been successful for many years and has produced outstanding graduates. As recent downturns in the .com industry have shown, it is impossible to predict the future of computing, but as faculty trying to prepare our students for their future, we still must try. 1 acritche@pilot.lsus.edu 2 kagarwal@pilot.lsus.edu 3 jsigle@pilot.lsus.edu 4 dfoley@pilot.lsus.edu