{ Applying the NSF/TCPP Curriculum Recommendations to a Liberal Arts Curriculum Akshaye Dhawan, Ursinus College

 Focused on a breadth of educational experiences  Three core divisions:  The Humanities  The Sciences  The Social Sciences The liberal arts model

 Rooted in the sciences  Mostly grew out of Mathematics Departments  Similar place within a liberal arts institution as that of Mathematics – seen as a key to our understanding of the world in an interdisciplinary and broad sense.  Example: CS 170 In Silico Computing at Ursinus Where does CS fit in all this?

 Emphasis on broad concepts  3 big goals that line up nicely with those of the liberal model of education:  Ability to organize and synthesize ideas  Ability to reason  Ability to communicate complex ideas  We do this all the time in CS! CS in the liberal arts

 Ursinus – total student body ~1600 students  All undergraduate  CS program – students  Class sizes for lower level courses:  Class sizes for upper level courses:  One upper level elective course on High Performance Computing CS 478  MPI, OpenMP  CUDA being introduced in next iteration CS at Ursinus

Focus on two core courses  Data Structures  Design and Analysis of Algorithms Fall 2011 Early Adopters

 Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium - LACS  Puts out curriculum recommendations – Last major one in  Emphasis on broad concepts not tied to specific architectures, languages and operating systems  A liberal arts approach to CS must include multiple problem-solving paradigms.  Need a liberal arts tailored set of recommendations – Organize and work on this with a larger group Future Directions