Hi.
My name's Perry Fizzano.
I'm a professor in the computer
science department at Western
Washington University.
And I'm recording this video for you as
part of the computer science department's
contribution to virtual-admitted
students day for 2020.
And, so, what I thought I'd do for this
video is just kind of walk you through the
website a little bit, and talk about some
key topics that will help you understand
more about the department.
And then, that also
gives you kind of a lead.
If you want to dig deeper on something,
you know kind of where to find it on the
website, and you can click
there for more information.
There's actually also going to be a live
Q&A session with someone, or a couple
people from the department,
I believe, on April 17th.
So you can look
out for that as well.
So, let's just start by
talking about the department.
And, you know, I've done a
presentation for admitted students
day for the last 10 years or so.
But this is a
little bit different.
But I always like to start
with and talk about first is
the people in the department.
So, for me, the people in the
department kind of make it what it is.
Here's a picture from
students at graduation last year.
This is a picture of cyber security club at
some competition where they won some award
for regional competition.
This is the group of CS mentors, or tutors
in the department that provide free drop-in
tutoring for students
in lower-level classes.
This is an aerial photo from a plane that
one of our faculty was flying that had a
camera mounted on the wing that
was being controlled in the cockpit.
And that was part of a senior project
for CS students in the department.
So, that's just a few photos.
Let's look at ‒ let's go to the
"people" tab on the website.
And if you want to go to the
website, it's just www.cs.wwu.edu.
And that will redirect you to the correct
website that you're looking at right here.
So, if I go to the people tab, that's where
you'll see information about faculty and
staff. So, there's numerous
faculty in the department.
There are faculty that have interests in
everything from human-computer interaction,
web design, computer gaming, graphics
‒ this is me without a beard ‒ I do
optimization algorithms, computer science
education, bioinformatics, people doing
computer security.
Here's a couple of our faculty that do
computer science education, that work with
future teachers, that we're trying to
build a bachelor of arts in education in
computer science education.
And that's coming hopefully
in the next year or two.
Faculty in the department that do machine
learning, computer security, natural
language processing, big data,
bioinformatics, high-performance computing,
human-computer interaction, more
computer security, computer vision.
And so, you know, you can look at these
faculties' interests, look at what they're up
to, and you can kind of see what their
research interests are, which also aligns
with their teaching interests.
We offer a lot of electives in the
department to supplement the core computer
science degree. And the electives, every
faculty usually has one or two electives
every year in their sort of pet
area that is usually aligned
with their research area.
Also, in the department, some good people
to know staff-wise: Mary Hall is a great
person to know for computer
science general advising.
She'll actually be one of the
people that does the Q&A session
that'll be live on April 17th.
And Mary is super-knowledgeable
about the department.
She's been our department
advisor for several years now.
And she helps students from the time
they get on campus, helping them with
registering for classes.
She does group advising sessions to get
information out to students about what's
going on in the department,
how to manage your schedule.
She does a lot of one-on-one
advising with students.
And she's just a
great resource to have.
She's super-knowledgeable.
Laura does the advising for the
cyber-security program in the department.
And then there's other staff that do
technical support, admin support in the
department. And, you know, it's a
very welcoming and friendly place.
So, I love in the people
in the department.
So, that's really what
makes it a great place.
Let's talk a little bit about
programs in the department.
So, there's two different
computer science degrees.
We offer a bachelors and a
master's degree in computer science.
There's also a math and
computer science combined degree.
And this combined degree is really owned by
the math department, but there are several
CS courses as part of that.
So, we link to it
from our website.
There's also some minors out there, for
people majoring in other things, you know,
other science disciplines, or
social science disciplines, humanities
disciplines, have minored in computer
science to kind of round out their degree.
There's also a degree
in cyber-security.
Now, this degree is actually only available
as a 2+2 program with local community
colleges, so people transfer into Western
after doing two years at a local community
college, and finish their bachelor of
science in cyber-security at Western.
But if you're a CS student, if you come
to Western as a first-year student, and you
are interested in cyber-security, then you
can do the bachelor's degree in computer
science, but take your elective
classes related to computer security or
cyber-security. Several of the
cyber-security courses are available as CS
electives, things like computer security,
advanced network security, reverse software
engineering; things like that.
And there's also some internet studies
certificates and things that we offer,
again, to people typically outside of the
CS department to give them a little bit of
technical focus
for their degrees.
So, that's the
degrees that we offer.
The Master's degree is actually available
as a Master's degree that people that get
bachelor's degrees at other universities
come to Western to do a Master's degree in
a couple of years.
They do some research,
some coursework.
The master's program is also available to
people in the CS department if you do your
undergraduate degree here.
And we have this program that's called the
fast-track program that lets you, in your
4th year, as an undergrad, you
start taking graduate-level classes.
And so, then, what you can do is,
you have those 4 undergrad years.
And that 4th year, you can start
taking graduate-level classes.
So, the 2 year master's degree, the first
year of the master's is really like the 4th
year of your undergrad, so you can do the
combined bachelor's and master's degree
together in 5 years.
And that's a great option for students that
are really excelling at the undergraduate
program. And yeah, having a master's degree
in computer science opens up doors for
different kinds of jobs, maybe more
research-oriented jobs, maybe just higher
levels of pay for other kinds of
software engineering positions.
So, it's a great option for people
that are excelling in the program.
So, let's talk a little bit
more about the student clubs.
So, this is something that I
think really sets Western apart.
Overall, in the entire campus, but
especially in the CS department, is the
students' ownership of their education
and their development as leaders.
There's lots and lots of opportunities
to take part in clubs in the department.
We have a chapter of the
Association for Computing Machinery.
So, this is kind of the professional body
for computer scientists in the country, the
ACM, and we have a local
student chapter here of that club.
They do things like
arrange hack-a-thons.
Or they do résumé-building workshops,
or things like that around professional
development. There's also an association
for women in computing club in the
department, focused on increasing
the representation of women in computer
science, which, you know,
historically has been very low.
But we've done a lot of work over the last
10 years or so to increase the percentage
of women in the department,
and create a more welcoming and
inclusive atmosphere for them.
The AWC also runs a “Sisters Plus” program
that's kind of a mentoring program for
students, where they pair up older
students, I shouldn't say "older" students,
but more advanced students with younger
students, to give them some mentorship
through their program.
There's a game design club.
There's a CS mentors program that I
mentioned, there was a photo on the very
first page of those CS mentors
standing on those stairs.
The CS mentors program is a great example
of student leadership and how it really
impacts the department.
So, several years ago ‒ 10 plus years
ago now ‒ some students just said, "hey, we
should have a tutoring program in the
department to help younger students in
introductory classes." And so
they basically just volunteered.
They said, hey, we're going to
set up shop in one of the labs.
And people can just drop
in and ask us questions.
Well, this turned into growing.
It grew every year.
The demand for tutoring and the
mentoring just went through the roof.
And so the mentoring
program got bigger and bigger.
We started finding some money in
the department to pay the mentors to
participate in the program.
There's now a head mentor who goes through
like an interview process and selects other
students to be mentors.
And there must be 20, 30 mentors now that
run the mentoring program from, I think
they run it from 4:00 to
7:00, Monday through Friday.
They do it in a lab.
Even this quarter, that we're going to be
online and virtual, the mentors are still
dedicated, and they're going to hold live
Zoom sessions with students to provide some
tutoring. So, the students are
very dedicated to this program.
And it's making a huge
impact on the students' success.
And, if you ask younger students in
the program that are in those introductory
classes, they love
having another outlet.
They always have their teacher to go
to, possibly a teaching assistant; certain
classes have
teaching assistants.
But, you know, they love another outlet
where they can be working on their stuff
and get their questions answered right
when they're working on things in the lab.
And, like I said, it's just
turning into a great thing.
We have clubs for AI, robotics, a
cyber-security club that's open to computer
science or cyber
security students.
There are people from other disciplines
that take part in that as well, that are
looking at cyber security
from other angles.
There's a whiteboard
coders club.
So if you're familiar at all with
like how technical interviews go.
Sometimes, part of the interview is "hey,
go the whiteboard and write me some code to
solve this kind of a problem."
And the whiteboard coders club tries to,
you know, kind of address that by saying,
hey, let's practice together.
They dig up problems either from job
interviews that they went on, or various
books that are out there.
And they do practice sessions where they
all, like, kind of quiz each other and hone
your communication skills, your
problem-solving skills, so that when you go
out to do that job interview, maybe you're
a little less anxious and a little more
confident that you have
those particular interview skills.
Even if you have all the computer science
skills, sometimes the interview is a little
bit anxiety inducing, if you will, because
there's the pressure of the interview.
The job is on the line.
And so they're trying to mimic that and
help students just hone those skills that
are necessary to
succeed in the interviews.
So, lots of clubs.
You can see the
clubs just going down.
The newest chapter for the National Society
of Black Engineers, SACNAS has a chapter
here in the campus at Western, in
the college of science and engineering.
There's sort of a lunch group called DevOps
that talks about problems in the world of
operations in computer science, from, like,
a systems administration and operations
standpoint. There's an IEEE student
chapter, Viking Women in Cybersecurity,
League of Vikings, so there's all sorts
of clubs that people can get involved in.
And that's a great way to hone your
leadership skills, meet people in the
department, and build up community in the
department in that welcoming environment.
So, speaking of welcoming environment,
I'll go over to this "equity and inclusion"
tab. Equity and inclusion has been a
central piece of the computer science
department for many, many years.
I just finished 8 years as
chair of the department.
And, during my time as chair, we did numerous
things focusing on equity and inclusion.
We were part of the national center for
Women in Information Technology's pay
setters program a few times, focusing on
tracking and understanding the retention of
women and minoritized students in the
department, and understanding what we were
doing to provide a more supportive
atmosphere in developing that, and honing
that atmosphere to make it more welcoming
and inclusive for everybody, whether they
have a disability, people of different
races, sexual orientations; everything.
So, one of the other things that's a new
piece or a new program in the whole college
of science and engineering is this
idea of an ambassadors program.
So, every year, there's going to be
a faculty and a student ambassador.
This year, the faculty ambassador is
Dr. Moushumi Sharmin in our department, and
the student
ambassador is Merril.
And, this quarter, they're
holding virtual office hours.
But in a typical quarter, they would hold
office hours where students (or faculty)
could come in and talk to them about equity
and inclusion issues, issues that they
were facing, so that then that provides
kind of a safe space to talk about that.
And then that information can be surfaced
up higher to the chair or other faculty in
committee meetings,
things like that.
You know, when I was chair, the door was
always open for people to come in and talk
to me about that.
But, at the same time, it's good to have
many outlets for people to discuss issues
like that, because
they're often sensitive.
And so that's something new that we
have going this year in the department.
And we're super happy that that's
a new feature in the department.
Yeah.
So, that kind of wraps up my discussion of
equity and inclusion and people and clubs
in the department.
I wanted to just talk a little bit more
about research in the department.
And I'll go back
to the "people" tab.
And you can see, like I said
before, everybody's research
interests are listed here.
And, you know, we have a Masters, and
all Masters students have to do research as
part of the Master’s degree.
But we have a very robust
undergraduate research program as well.
And many undergrads are
involved in some sort of research.
Not all of it leads
to publication.
Some of it is just aimed
at developing skills.
But some of it does lead to publication;
poster presentations, articles and
conferences, or journals have come
out of undergraduate research at Western.
A few years ago, at the Grace Hopper
Celebration for Women in Computing, they
have an undergraduate
research competition.
And Western students took first and second
place in the same year at that competition
one year, which is really a testament to,
like I said, the robustness and the quality
of the experience that undergrads
get, with regard to research.
And for those that don't really understand,
like, what is research, it always
seems kind of abstract.
Computer science research
is often very applied.
And it's also kind of just like a way to
have the student take ownership of their
education, and do some
self-directed learning.
And those skills that you build up
doing research: communication skills,
problem-solving skills, how to learn things
on your own ‒ those are all skills that
serve you well in the workplace, whether or
not you go into a research position, or go
off to get an advanced degree.
Those skills that you build up in research
are often applicable, even if you go into a
typical software
engineering position.
So, now, let me just wrap up by
talking a little bit about opportunities.
So, one of the reasons people come into
computer science these days is because
there are a wealth of
opportunities out there.
There is numerous jobs in the Seattle area,
in King County, in software engineering.
They're lucrative positions.
And that's awesome.
It's great to see students work hard during
college and then get a great job that
they're excited about, earning a great
paycheck when they get out of college.
90-95% of our students are employed soon
after graduation, if not having a job lined
up before they even graduate.
And usually there's a few percent who
aren't employed they have chosen, like, to
take a year off and go bike
through Europe or something.
But, yeah, even those people,
when they come back, you know,
then they have a job lined up.
So, it's a very rich field
in terms of opportunities.
All the jobs are not necessarily in what
you would think of as typical software
engineering positions.
We have people doing things like
more research-focused positions at Pacific
Northwest National Labs in
Seattle, or in Richmond, Washington.
We have people working at Vulcan
or the Allen Brain Institute doing more
research-oriented
kinds of positions.
We have people that
have been into education.
We have that have gone off to
get PhDs and became professors.
And so, there's many opportunities
out there for computer science.
Generally, one of the things that's coming
up more and more all the time is ‒ with the
increase in data science ‒ is that there's
just a great way to make an impact in the
world through computer science.
I always like to say that, you know, if we
ever claim one day that we've cured cancer
‒ you know, who
cures cancer, right?
It's going to be people that are experts
in medicine and biology and chemistry.
But there's definitely going to be people
in that group that are statisticians, and
computer scientists, and data scientists,
and people that do data visualization
because, you know, a lot of the big,
important problems of the day related to
energy or healthcare or virus outbreaks,
a lot of things like that require a
multi-disciplinary
effort to attack it.
There is no single person in
the world that is going to come up
with these problems on their own.
And so, one of the things that we like to
emphasize here at Western is: learn how to
collaborate. Learn how to collaborate
with people outside your discipline.
Learn how to communicate well.
And, you know, build your technical skills
and things like that so you can be a great
contributor on the computer science
or technical side of those issues.
But, look at it that way, as
opposed to a "go it alone" endeavor.
We always have job
opinions listed on our website.
There's a career
center at Western.
The Viking Career link ‒
that's also listing tons of jobs.
There's career fairs every quarter that you
can, as a student, go participate in those
to get an internship
or a full-time job.
You can just go explore, too.
As a freshman, maybe you're thinking, I'm
not going to look for an internship this
year, although some people do obtain
internships after their freshman year.
But I would say more typical is
after sophomore or junior year.
But you can go to career fairs as a
freshman and kind of dip your toe in the
water, and see what's going on.
We also have companies come
to campus in a normal quarter.
Every week or so, a company will come and
do what we call a "tech talk" where they'll
talk about, "hey, here's the cool problems
that we're working on." And then students
can engage with those people.
Often times, they're alumni
that come back to do that.
And so that can really relate
to their current students.
And those people can talk
about exact, you know, "hey here's
this job you should apply for."
They also do things like people will come
back to campus and do things like "hey,
let's review resumes together and I'll
critique or resume or your cover letter or
something like that." Google
was here last year for a few days.
And they did all
these mock interviews.
They did actual interviews.
They did talks.
They met with different clubs to talk
about what they were up to in the club
and how they could do even
more interesting things in the clubs.
And so, you know, we have
this very rich alumni network.
And the alumni are very well
connected to current students.
And so that networking, those opportunities
that are available to students helps pave
the way for students to
obtain internships and jobs.
So, I'm just going
to wrap up with that.
And I want to thank you for participating
in virtual admitted students day for the
computer science department.
And, like I said, there will be a live Q&A
session with Mary Hall, and potentially
others, on April 17th.
And use that as a format to reach out
and get some other questions answered.
You're also welcome to, you know, write an
email to the department or something like
that if you have a specific
question for somebody.
Otherwise, thanks for watching.
Stay well.
And take care.
