Expanding the frontiers of computer science: designing a curriculum to reflect a diverse field

  • Authors:

  • Mehran Sahami;Alex Aiken;Julie Zelenski

  • Affiliations:

  • Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA;Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

While the discipline of computing has evolved significantly in the past 30 years, Computer Science curricula have not as readily adapted to these changes. In response, we have recently completely redesigned the undergraduate CS curriculum at Stanford University, both modernizing the program as well as highlighting new directions in the field and its multi-disciplinary nature. As we explain in this paper, our restructured major features a streamlined core of foundation courses followed by a depth concentration in a track area as well as additional elective courses. Since its deployment this past year, the new program has proven to be very attractive to students, contributing to an increase of over 40% in the number of CS major declarations. We analyze feedback we received on the program from students, as well as commentary from industrial affiliates and other universities, providing further evidence of the promise this new curriculum holds.