CPATH EAE: Extending Contextualized Computing in Multiple Institutions Using Threads Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY) Elizabeth Sklar Gerald Weiss Ira Rudowsky Status Report: 25-jan-2008 cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 1
overview Computer and Information Science (CIS) department 30 full-time faculty teaching load: 7 courses per year at least 1/3 not involved in any research more than 1/2 have been there at least 20 years mostly undergrad teaching major: BS in computer and information science (54-57 credits) minor in computer and information science (25-29 credits) minor multimedia computing (25-29 credits) minor in cognitive science (25-29 credits) minor in parallel an distributed computing (25-29 credits) certificate in computers and programming (24-28 credits) joint major with math: computational math (BS) (51-57 credits) two options : computational and theoretical cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 2
joint major with economics: business information systems (BS-MPS) (140 credits = 110 ugrad + 30 ms) under approval: major in information systems (BS) approved, awaiting implementation: major in multimedia computing (BS) masters at BC MS in computer and information science MA in multimedia computing not all faculty teach at masters level and phd at CUNY Grad Center (in Manhattan) most faculty not involved in phd program; while a few faculty teach/work there almost exclusively almost no credit for phd advising (complicated story) cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 3
who are we? Brooklyn College, one of 19 campuses of CUNY (City University of New York) one of 7 senior colleges (bachelors and masters degrees) one PhD granting institution (Graduate Center) many community colleges (associates degrees) centralized union for all CUNY faculty student body at Brooklyn: 60% female 30.7% African American, 11% Hispanic but not in computer science (78% white male) 80+% attended high school in Brooklyn less than 10% of Brooklyn high schools offer any computer science course, let alone AP CS 70+% work part-time; many work full-time (don t have stats) cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 4
large immigrant population: cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 5
gender breakdown in early CS classes: cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 6
retention rates in early CS classes: cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 7
where are we? we ve been re-designing the major: 1.5, 15, 22 (CS1, CS2, CS3) (intro prog + ds = 11 credits) ** new 11 (discrete structures) (3 credits) 20.1, 20.1 (design and implementation of software applications, 6 credits) ** new 25 (3 credits) 26 (3 credits) 27.1 ** new (3 credits) 23 or 38 (3 credits) 60.1 or 88.1 (internship or project) (3 credits) 12W (ethics) (3 credits) math: 2 semesters of calculus (6 credits) math: probability and statistics (3 credits) two electives heavily tied to ACM CC 2001 cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 8
we have our NSF BPC Bridges program that has been focusing on CS0, CS1, CS2 has five interdisciplinary flavors: business (e-commerce) law (legal applications, security, privacy, cryptography) medicine (medical informatics, bioinformatics, biologically-inspired systems/alife) graphics (and games) robotics (and simulations) we already have track buy-in we want to reduce the math to 8 credits (2 specialized 4-credit courses) we need more electives in order to do threads our major = core + electives GT thread = requirements + picks + electives core >= requirements + picks cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 9
challenges faculty buy-in at least 1/3 of the faculty do not do any research how do we involve them in a thread? several faculty are REALLY invested in the CORE how do we include them in a constructive way? come up with our own threads in order to get ppl to think we are inventing something new commuting campus culture, both faculty and students articulation with community colleges lack of release time for development (beyond cpath co-pi s) marketing to students advising cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 10
plans get faculty to buy-in, ownership two-tiered design approach: top-down: we design the threads and present them bottom-up: we convince people of the philosophy and get them to design the threads data analysis: overwhelm them with data... map BC curric to ACM CC 2001 and 2005 (also map GT threads?) examine enrollments, popularity historically map our courses to GT Threads (next page) cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 11
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what s next what can you (GT) do to help? help with tools (e.g., threadspace) marketing materials moral support :-) ideas tie-in skills from ACM CC 2001/2005 and job ads to courses and threads tie-in with rejuvenation of masters program tie-in with Bridges flavors intelligence media foundations distributed computing (?) commerce medicine policy (?) cpath-25jan08-sklar-weiss 13