CSE Curriculum Revision (OLD PAGE)

This web page contains information about the 300-level curriculum-revision effort. This web page will include information about current and upcoming committee events as well as documenting the work of the committee as it progresses.

Page with draft course descriptions

Page with meeting notes and agendas

February/March faculty survey results (access restricted)

Older Announcements

[mar 23 2009] (1) First agenda for Spring Quarter posted, (2) Final notes of Winter Quarter posted, (3) Survey results posted
[feb 24 2009] Next meeting (agenda), Tuesday 2/24/09, 11-noon, cse110
[feb 17 2009] We will meet twice this week: agenda
[feb 10 2009] Next meeting (agenda), Tuesday 2/10/09, 11-noon, cse110
[feb 3 2009] More information posted on recent changes from Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon
[feb 3 2009] Next meeting (agenda), Tuesday 2/3/09, 11-noon, cse110
[jan 27 2009] Next meeting (agenda), Tuesday, 1/27/09, 11-noon, cse110
[jan 24 2009] Page with meeting notes and agendas (notes have restricted access)
[jan 16 2009] Committee members finalized.
[jan 12 2009] Committee forms

Committee Resources

Dan's course inventory
Some notes on the 400 level
Other curriculum revision efforts: Cornell, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, UT Austin
- Tom's notes on UT
- Tom's notes on Berkeley
- Paul's information on Carnegie Mellon
- Cornell's 312
- Stanford's Mathematical Foundations course: Stuart's notes, syllabus, main page
Undergraduate Feedback: undergrad exit survey, program feedback report

Detailed course information:

Course	Title	Units	Web Page	Syllabus
CSE303	Concepts & Tools for Software Development	3 units	web
CSE321	Discrete Structures	4 units	web	syllabus
CSE322	Intro to Formal Models in CS	3 units	web	syllabus
CSE326	Data Structures	4 units	web	syllabus
CSE341	Programming Languages	4 units	web	syllabus
CSE370	Intro to Digital Design	4 units	web	syllabus
CSE378	Machine Organization & Assembly Language	4 units	web	syllabus
STAT390	Probability & Statistics in Engineering & Science	4 units	web
STAT391	Probability & Statistics for Computer Science	4 units	web
	Total core	30 units

Committee Formation

Dan Grossman and Stuart Reges have been appointed co-chairs of a new committee to explore how we should update our undergraduate curriculum. The department has been following an incremental approach. While that hasn't been a disaster, certain changes are likely to happen only in conjunction with a large set of simultaneous changes and in the context of examining a large set of classes and their interrelationships. We have made a stab at this several times in the past without great success.

We hope and intend that this time will be different. Below are some important guiding principles of the committee:

We don't want the scope of this committee to be too broad. As a result, we won't be discussing changes to the introductory courses (142 and 143) or to 400-level classes. Instead we'll focus on the seven 300-level course courses (303, 321, 322, 326, 341, 370, and 378). We will also consider related courses like the Stat390 course that seems to be unpopular among our students. These courses are required of all our majors, they are generally taken before most senior-level courses, and they are taught by multiple faculty members.
We want to have a curriculum that is up-to-date in the sense that it is responsive to the needs of today's undergraduates and that it adequately prepares our students for senior-level courses we expect to be offering. Given the increasing breadth of our field and changing technologies, it is likely that our 300-level curriculum could be improved with respect to these goals. We also want to make sure the curriculum is effective in that it doesn't have excessive overlap of material and it fits together in a coherent manner. We will also have to consider important constraints like the need for quality textbooks and/or other curriculum materials and the fact that we need to have courses that a broad range of our faculty can teach.
We plan to have a high degree of transparency and openness. Anyone who is willing to put in the time is welcome on the committee. Others will have the opportunity to attend individual meetings that are of interest to them. Through this web page and regular email updates, we will keep the faculty informed about what the committee is working on and what will be discussed at upcoming meetings. We expect everyone with strong opinions will participate on relevant topics in a timely manner (i.e., when the committee addresses them).
We plan to spend a lot of time working on this. We are asking potential committee members to commit to an hour a week for most of winter and spring quarters.
We plan to be proactive about talking to individuals to find out what their concerns are and to explore how they might be accommodated.
Given our past history, it would be naive to assume that everything will work out this time, but we hope everyone realizes that this is probably the last time we'll attempt this for a very long time.

Committee Members

Tom Anderson
Paul Beame
Gaetano Borriello
Crystal Eney
Michael Ernst
Dan Grossman, co-chair
Bruce Hemingway
David Notkin
Hal Perkins
Megan Reardon
Stuart Reges, co-chair
Marty Stepp
John Zahorjan

Stuart Reges

Last modified: Tue Mar 10 10:02:06 PDT 2009