Lindsey Morford: So give me just a second here. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you so that we can talk a little bit about
Lindsey Morford: What computer science looks like here at CU Boulder.
Lindsey Morford: All right, can we see that now.
Lindsey Morford: Yes. Perfect. All right.
Lindsey Morford: Let's see here.
Lindsey Morford: Alright, so like I said, my name is Lindsey Morford and one of the academic advisors here and I'm going to let our associate co Chair of undergrad education introduce herself.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Hi I'm IANA me I'm a professor in computer science and I'm one of the associate chairs for undergraduate education. We are so excited that
Ioana Fleming - CS: You are interested in computer science here at CU Boulder and I want to share with you one of the first thing I talked to my students in the introductory Programming course.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Everybody asks, What is computer science. So, you know, are we trying to figure out computers. Well, it turns out, computers are pretty well understood.
Ioana Fleming - CS: But anything that has to do with the box and the components that is actually part of the
Ioana Fleming - CS: Electrical and Computer Engineering Department what we hear in Computer Science Study is basically programs. So what is what drives our computers. So here at CU, you will learn to write your first programs and then you will go on to program robots.
Ioana Fleming - CS: design algorithms, maybe tackle a big amount of data and figure out something for you know the benefit of your small town or the whole world.
Ioana Fleming - CS: You will be very aware of security issues, you will learn to Design apps for, you know, maybe your mobile phone and figure out how to make your programs interact with with users. So this is all inside your computer science degree.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Like I said, it is exciting. It is an excellent time to study computer science, it's been for a while and you know kind of lucky for us, it continues to be
Ioana Fleming - CS: There is continuous job growth. I'm pretty sure your parents told you that you know going to computer science because
Ioana Fleming - CS: You know you have a good good chance of getting a job. But it's not just a job, it's, it's funny jobs that we all like to do and an impactful jobs. And one of the things with computer science now is that everything is so interdisciplinary. So basically,
Ioana Fleming - CS: A lot of other fields, you know, are asking now for computer science skills. So there are opportunities, not just in house a pure software computer science companies, but a lot of other companies that are looking for.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Specialists machine learning specialist artificial intelligence specialist. So it's a really exciting time.
Ioana Fleming - CS: And here at at CU Boulder, we are really proud of the community, we bring together.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Lindsay will tell you about how many students are taking computer science courses majors and minors.
Ioana Fleming - CS: From all sorts of different departments around the around the college and around the university, you have a strong alumni network.
Ioana Fleming - CS: We have two different bachelor degree options and some focus more on technology and engineering. Some are more applied, like I said, more on the idea of the interdisciplinary and in other fields.
Ioana Fleming - CS: We pride ourselves in offering really quality education because this is a very competitive field and we want you to start right and learn the right skills from the very beginning, strong technical skills and we really, really love our
Ioana Fleming - CS: Practical senior design capstone project which you will hear about more in a second. But I think that's what makes our computer scientists, you really special.
Lindsey Morford: Yeah. So just a little bit more about computer science at CU Boulder, so like we want to his mission. We have a minor. We have a BA BS. We have a BS, MS program, which is where students can
Lindsey Morford: Do an accelerated masters and that starts, while there while they're still in their bachelor's degree. And then we have a couple of different graduate programs, computer science here at CU Boulder is the second largest major on campus with
Lindsey Morford: 1700 plus undergrad majors. I think that that number continues to grow. And we also have a very, very popular minor 350 plus students who are pursuing a computer science minor to apply in areas such as aerospace engineering
Lindsey Morford: Economics technology arts and media and some other things we have a large, large and involved graduate student population.
Lindsey Morford: A number of faculty members who are specializing in a lot of different areas of computer science. And we have some wonderful alumni, but that we are continually developing programs for to allow our current students in the department to connect with those alumni.
Lindsey Morford: That can computer science program. So you as far as the courses. Go. We have a number of courses that we require students to take
Lindsey Morford: That every computer science major should know. And so we talked about both the hardware and software, although primarily like when I was seeing. We're looking at software human computer interaction. Some things like that.
Lindsey Morford: And then we also we're working on. We actually have a departmental action team who's currently working on brainstorming new ways to
Lindsey Morford: Communicate information to students in a way that allows you to really enjoy learning. And so we're working constantly to make our to make our program even better. We're constantly
Lindsey Morford: Evaluating it based on what skills are employer say that students need to have
Lindsey Morford: That's something that's really important to us. We want to make sure that you are prepared to go out and industry and make a significant contribution or into higher ed. We do have students also that will go into into research and some things like that.
Lindsey Morford: The Bachelor of Science is a bed accredited. And typically, the difference between the Bachelor of Science in the bachelor of arts is that
Lindsey Morford: The Bachelor science students take more Computer Science coursework and so for a Bachelor of Science, you're focusing more on math.
Lindsey Morford: On the math and science pieces bachelor science students are required to take 58 credit hours of computer science.
Lindsey Morford: Like I was mentioning, however, there are a lot of industries outside of tech that are looking for ways to
Lindsey Morford: Incorporate computer science in their fields. And so I'm going to let you believe see talk for a minute about the Bachelor of Arts, which is our other degree option that's extremely popular
Eva Lacy: Hi everyone, my name is Eva Lacey I'm one of the advisors for the BA in computer science.
Eva Lacy: And as Lindsay mentioned the BA was created to be an opportunity for students to get a really solid computer science education but also combine that with
Eva Lacy: Another field of study, whether it's something that you see as combining with computer science to create a novel degree path I may or another novel career path.
Eva Lacy: Or it's something that you can combine computer science with and have enough time outside of that major to explore your passions.
Eva Lacy: So part of the requirements of the BA that is housed in the College of Engineering. It does require an additional area of study that students declare it can be a minor. It can be a certificate. It can be what we call a dual degree.
Eva Lacy: Which engineering means two majors.
Eva Lacy: There is
Eva Lacy: Lindsay mentioned there are 58 hours of computer science computing coursework, the two curricula are almost identical except for the fact that the be a computer science goes through 40 up to 45 hours and then they you also explore that breadth and depth of
Eva Lacy: In some ways, liberal arts education by doing what we call a general education curriculum to get a little bit more breadth and depth in arts and humanities, social sciences.
Eva Lacy: And again, to help you explore potentially a novel combination with computer science.
Eva Lacy: One great thing about
Eva Lacy: You know, the things that aren't different between the BS and the BA is there's one computer science department. So we are talking about students all are in the same classes taught by the same faculty
Eva Lacy: Taught everyone has the same access to departmental resources and opportunities and college wide resources and opportunities.
Lindsey Morford: One example of what we're talking about with kind of diversifying our computer science.
Lindsey Morford: Specific career fair, a couple of the companies. So, for example, Nordstrom was they're looking for
Lindsey Morford: Interns and we usually think of Nordstrom as being like clothing or retail, but they're looking for computer science majors to to intern with their company. So that's, that's an example of how computer science effects, lots of different fields, not simply the technology sector.
Lindsey Morford: We do have. So since computer science is such a broad field. We do have. We don't require students and I do want to clarify this, we do not require students to choose a plan of study.
Lindsey Morford: As far as like a focus area in computer science. However, we do want to make sure we do have lists of classes that fall under specific categories.
Lindsey Morford: Because many students have a specific area that they're mostly interested in. So, for example, a lot of students who are interested in the system's level on the lower level programming are probably not going to be as interested in focusing on the higher level human human centered computing
Lindsey Morford: user interaction pieces and so computational biology how students, how, how we can use computation to model different. For example, disease epidemics or
Lindsey Morford: Some things like that. We also robotics artificial intelligence, machine learning computer security, cyber security all of those kinds of things. We have specific classes that students can take if they're interested in those specific specific fields and so
Lindsey Morford: We'll have an opportunity for questions at the end. If you have questions about specific area, we'd like we'd be more than happy to answer those for you.
Lindsey Morford: Finally, we do have a capstone opportunity that students will complete as part of the BS in computer science. And so I like to tell students. It's very similar to a
Lindsey Morford: Have built an internship, because with our software. We've got three different options.
Lindsey Morford: But the one that a lot of students choose to do as a software project option we have industry sponsors. It could be anyone from Visa NASA. There's a local robotics company someone on campus. He wants an app developed
Lindsey Morford: All of these partners sponsor projects and then students work as a team to create do the coding work with a sponsor to plan, different things like that.
Lindsey Morford: Throughout their senior year for students who are interested in starting their own business. We also have an entrepreneurial option where students who can work with.
Lindsey Morford: industry professionals who have actually experience with entrepreneurship and they can learn what it looks like to pitch your idea to investors.
Lindsey Morford: Figure out if you have a marketable product different things like that. And so students will work again on a team to try to get a head start and developing their company so that when they graduate.
Lindsey Morford: They have all of those pieces kind of put in place. And finally for students are interested in going on to get their PhD. We have see we have
Lindsey Morford: Opportunities to do research through senior thesis. We have a lot of wonderful faculty who will work with students on some of those some of those things I have students
Lindsey Morford: Doing senior thesis projects right now in robotics computational biology and programming languages. And so there's some really neat opportunities there as well.
Lindsey Morford: And I'm going to let a wanna talk about them. The community here at see you and especially in computer science.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Yes. So besides the coursework, which can be very exciting as Lindsay told us. There's a lot of things you can do outside of classroom.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Um, you know, students get together, either from the same major or from different majors and they kind of follow their passions.
Ioana Fleming - CS: You know, there's a robotics clubs. There's some women in computing society for women engineers.
Ioana Fleming - CS: All of these clubs meet you know once a week, once a month they they put on events they they try to to get you to basically have well I guess a social life, but that it still connected with your
Ioana Fleming - CS: Passions for for computing. There are hackathons. I know there's a women Hackathon once a semester. But there are other hackathons to
Ioana Fleming - CS: Do you don't know what hackathons are. I don't. It's not like a secret, but I'd like you to come and experience one sometimes companies come and have a problem that they need solved, but that basically this like big
Ioana Fleming - CS: big event where everybody comes and tries to kind of solve the problem or multiple problems, but you can come with your buddies and your friends and
Ioana Fleming - CS: It can last all weekend and they'll be pizza and your best friends. They are to solve problems with and
Ioana Fleming - CS: Companies that are looking to hire people and a lot of my students get their first internship at at hackathons.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Lindsay mentioned cyber security. There's a cyber security club. There's a data science team again people trying to you know get together outside of classrooms and do some things, following the little specific things they are interested in
Ioana Fleming - CS: Besides, computer science, if you have a passion for computing, but maybe you don't know exactly. For sure. What will excite you, once you get here.
Ioana Fleming - CS: There are other paths. Um, so, for example, we talked about if you're interested more in the hardware and how can you make our computers better
Ioana Fleming - CS: Then maybe your places in the electrical and computer engineering for those thinkers who take your phones apart and your old grandpas radios. That's the electrical and computer engineering major right
Ioana Fleming - CS: We have a lot of students who sometimes starting computer science, but they end up migrating to
Ioana Fleming - CS: tam technology acting media major or information science or data science. So think about technology, arts and media as people who are more interested in visualizing data.
Ioana Fleming - CS: In how do we create better apps that offer like better user experience or better websites or anything that has to do with merging.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Art concepts and engineering concepts and focus more on like the user experience.
Ioana Fleming - CS: We have information science that is, in a way, still using data, but is focused on more solving society's problems.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Data science is our for those people interested in numbers and math and they still solve world problems, but they're more focused on statistics and you know you hear the big buzzword being data.
Ioana Fleming - CS: That's where they go for data science and statistics like all of these, you don't have to necessarily transition for computer science, you can add them as a minor too. So you can have a computer science major.
Ioana Fleming - CS: And a minor in town, but just please know that because as Lindsay was saying, the field is so broad,
Ioana Fleming - CS: And we are all different individuals that you can find something that fits your interests and your passions at to you within the computer science department and within other departments where you kind of would be able to create as Eva was saying your novel personalized career path.
Ioana Fleming - CS: If you are interested in
Ioana Fleming - CS: You know, working for the computer science department. One of the opportunities are most fun about is being a course assistant
Ioana Fleming - CS: So, um, I teach, among other things, they have the intro computer science classes and I love having students who took my class.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Come back the following semester and become the ones that help other students. So, you know, if you find yourself being the student awake at midnight loving to answer.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Your friends questions right then, this is the opportunity for you. It's a really, really good opportunity because it keeps you prepared to answer those questions for job interviews later as you graduate. As you move on in your career.
Ioana Fleming - CS: You can do research as India was saying there is the thesis at the end. But you can start doing research with one of our amazing faculty, even after your first year at CU
Ioana Fleming - CS: And of course, outside of Cu whether in the boulder area or just all over the country and the world, there's a lot of opportunities for internships and employment.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Couple of years ago, we started just our own computer science career fair. So there is a career fair where companies interested in computer science jobs come in advertise
Ioana Fleming - CS: Everybody from campus ease invited, but for sure if you are a computer science major. You have kind of a leg up there to to get those internships that there's long lines of students and lots of employers.
Ioana Fleming - CS: Local and non local you know nostrums but you know Uber and united and a lot of the space companies aerospace companies that are in Colorado hire a lot of our computer science majors, so
Ioana Fleming - CS: Google, of course, and Oracle and Ball Aerospace and north of grooming so that there's too many for me to mention all of them right now but
Ioana Fleming - CS: This probably ties in with what I was mentioning, at the very beginning, it's an exciting time to start a career in computer science. And there are a lot of opportunities.
Lindsey Morford: So that's the end of our presentation we want. We didn't want to give you are. We have a few minutes for questions here. But I did also want to give you the contact information for both myself and you want to
Lindsey Morford: If you have questions about the BA, feel free to contact me and I'll forward that to EVA.
Lindsey Morford: But this is our contact information if we can't get through, because I think we probably won't be able to get through all the questions you have, in the time that we have, but feel free to reach out to us and we're more than happy to
Lindsey Morford: To assist you.
