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Lafayette’s bachelor of science program in computer science has received accreditation from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), confirming its standing in the upper echelon of computer science programs in the country.
According to figures released last year by ABET, only three liberal arts colleges in the United States offered accredited computer science programs.
“Accreditation certifies that the bachelor of science program in computer science satisfies rigorous standards with respect to curriculum, faculty, labs and student support,” says William Collins, associate professor and head of computer science. “It’s a measure of the quality of our program.”
He estimates that there are roughly 1,000 computer science programs at the nation’s colleges and universities, and according to ABET, about 150 are accredited. Very few liberal arts colleges have an accredited program, says Collins, because of the substantial curriculum and number of faculty required.
The computer science department’s excellence was bolstered this fall with the addition of a fifth full-time professor.
“Also, the number of students engaged in a senior thesis or independent study has increased dramatically in the last five years,” says Collins. “Finally, with the move to Acopian Engineering Center, the laboratory facilities are greatly improved. We now have two labs devoted to the computer science program. On each computer, a student has the option of logging on to Linux or Windows.”
For the past two years, a Lafayette student has been among the few in the nation to receive a Microsoft Scholarship Award, recognizing him as one of the very top computer science students in the United States. Last year, Alex Balan ’03 (Bucharest, Romania) was one of only ten undergraduates nationally to earn the award, and the prior year, Marquis Scholar Matthew Patton ’02 (Los Alamos, N.Mex.) was one of only eight undergraduates honored. Patton also was the recipient of a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate award of its type in the field of science, engineering, and mathematics.
Two groups of students scored within the top fifth of teams in the highly competitive Mid-Atlantic Region of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest last year. Only five institutions placed two teams ahead of Lafayette’s entries in the competition.
Computer science students at Lafayette have a wealth of opportunity to participate in research projects and significant group projects under the guidance of faculty mentors. In addition to their courses, Lafayette’s EXCEL Scholars program gives computer science majors and others opportunities to conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. Many of the 180 students who participate in EXCEL each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
Research projects conducted by students with computer science faculty collaborators or mentors in recent years have included:
Computer science majors also conduct interdisciplinary research with professors in other fields, such as projects last year that involved computerizing the holdings of the music department’s music library; using computational geometry to build on a mathematical puzzle known as the Carpenter’s Rule Problem, with the results potentially impacting the field of robotics; and studying the physics of early crystal growth to understand the origins of these complex growth patterns, with applications in various disciplines, including metallurgy.
A group of computer science seniors is developing a database this fall that local YMCA swimmers will access from the Internet to track their individual progress in various events over the course of the year as well as in comparison to past seasons. In a groundbreaking project that will help social agencies analyze data and apply for grant applications, four computer science majors in the same course last year developed an online database to chart risk factors and their consequences on the community for Northampton County Communities That Care, an organization that serves local elementary and secondary students.
Last semester, a software engineering class led by Chun Wai Liew, assistant professor of computer science divided into teams to create basic versions of The SIMS, a game in which users manipulate groups of simulated people in various scenarios and watch the effects of their input.
Between 45 and 50 students are majoring in computer science, according to Collins, with about 35 in the bachelor of science program and the rest seeking the bachelor of arts degree.
The process of seeking accreditation included a department self-study outlined in a report numbering about 150 pages. Following that step, three ABET judges visited campus to evaluate the program last October. The categories they analyzed included faculty, curriculum, student support, administration support, laboratories, classrooms, and the “general environment” of the program, says Collins.