1998-1999 Undergraduate Catalog
Indiana, Pennsylvania 15705

The College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Department of Computer Science
William W. Oblitey, Chairperson; Buterbaugh, Cross, Cunningham, Grove, Micco, Shubra, Watts, Wolfe; and professor emeritus Tompkins

Degrees offered in the Department of Computer Science are the Bachelor of Science and the Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science. The programs are designed primarily to prepare graduates for productive work in highly computer-oriented areas of business, government, and industry. In recent years, students graduating from the program have attained their first jobs in business applications, programming and systems analysis, computer software development, scientific and applied mathematical programming, and other computer-related areas and have gone to graduate school.

In a rapidly developing field such as Computer Science, it is important that the graduate's education be broad and fundamental so that new trends can more readily be followed. Our goal is to balance fundamentality and breadth with sufficient supervised practice so that our graduates are productive at the time they graduate but ready and willing to change with the field.

Most applied computer scientists work in cooperation with professionals trained in other areas and with managers. Hence, the ability to work and communicate with others of different educational backgrounds is an important characteristic. To that end, we encourage Computer Science majors to take a strong minor (or area concentration) in a second area of interest. Some students may wish to double major. Majors in other disciplines at IUP are also welcome to take Computer Science courses for which they are qualified or a Computer Science minor.

Students majoring in Computer Science should set their goals beyond simple programming and should be preparing

to program well, both in design and implementation phases, and document what they have programmed
to analyze real-world problems in preparation for program design and implementation
to manage activities that are strongly computer dependent
to improve the tools that programmers and systems analysts use, i.e., to develop
1. better machine systems
2. better software systems
3. better languages for communicating with machines
4. better methods for solving intractable problems
to teach about computers at college or high school level
to advance the fundamental theory of digital information processors.

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This information is maintained by the Office of the Registrar, with approval from the University Senate. Last Modified at 10:57 AM on 7/27/98.