Discussion list for the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges. The committee will conduct most of its business via this list.
This is a quick update on the activities of the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges and a heads up for a (hopefully) upcoming event that will (hopefully) be of interest to many of you.
As noted in a previous e-mail to this list the Report of the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in the Liberal Arts<https://doi.org/10.1145/3314027> (https://doi.org/10.1145/3314027) appeared in the June edition of Inroads. That report is the culmination of the first several years of this committee's work and has firmly established the need for an on-going organization with two broad purposes: 1. Providing
As Doug mentioned in his last email to this group, there have been conversations with the SIGCSE Board about how to move forward with transitioning this group into a permanent organization. Short term, their recommendation is that we continue to exist as a committee while we work through that process. At the same time, as a committee we could continue to sponsor events at the technical symposium and work on other activities that our recently published report indicates the community would like to see.
Our SIGCSE committee on computing education in liberal arts colleges has its report officially published, in the June Inroads. Check it out in Inroads or the ACM digital library. Thank you all for your work on this, and congratulations on a job well done.
By the way, some of the committee leaders have been in conversations with SIGCSE about following up the report's recommendation to create some sort of permanent body to represent and support computing educators in liberal arts institutions. Stay tuned for more on that shortly....
Good news, SIGCSE liberal arts committee members! Inroads magazine has accepted our report for publication. So it will appear in an upcoming issue (not sure which one yet), as well as being available through the SIGCSE web site.
There have been some discussions with the SIGCSE board about how SIGCSE and the proposed permanent liberal arts group might relate -- SIGCSE seems interested in helping, but more on that as it happens.
Hello, and happy holidays, SIGCSE liberal arts committee.
While finishing our report has maybe been slower than hoped, it has been happening. It's now ready for submission to Inroads, and I'm happy to share with you the version that's about to be submitted. The authors are anonymized for submission, but if you're wondering, they are me, Amanda Holland-Minkley, and Grant Braught.
Hello again, SIGCSE liberal arts committee. As I mentioned over the summer, we are moving towards submitting our report for publication. Current thinking is to send it to ACM Inroads. They want submissions in Word files, so this morning I downloaded the draft report as it exists in Google docs to my computer to put it into Inroads' Word template. You can see the document as I downloaded it at
I (along with Amanda Holland-Minkley and Grant Braught) am happy to say that there's now a draft report from the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in the Liberal Arts. Since that's also you, I'd like to invite you to take a look at the draft and share your thoughts.
One of my jobs this summer is to put our discussions over the past 2 years into the form of a committee report, ultimately to appear in something like ACM Inroads. You're all welcome to watch the progress (so far pretty tentative), and even more welcome to comment on it, at
I have this embarrassed feeling that I wrote up the notes from the liberal arts committee session at SIGCSE 2018 and then forgot to tell anyone they were done. So for any of you who have been waiting to see them, my apologies, and take a look at
Comments and discussion welcome, of course. Expect a further push this summer to build a committee report from these and our other work. Thanks, as always, for your interest.
Dear All, I am writing to find out if any of your institutions use inclusive teaching practices as criteria to evaluate candidates for tenure or promotion. If so, are these departmental or institutional criteria?
At my institution (Bucknell University - a liberal arts institution with an engineering college), retention, tenure, and promotion criteria are laid out broadly by the University, and then detailed by the department. The University Review Committee evaluates candidates' materials in reference to a document crafted by the department (the so-called Departmental Review Criteria document).
Responses to the survey seem to have trailed off so in the interest in having some time to reflect on the results before SIGCSE, I have prepared the attached summary of results. I go into more detail and have specific data/quotes in the summary document, but in general, the survey seems to indicate the following:
Hopefully you all saw the email on the SIGCSE mailing list last week announcing this committee's survey about providing a voice for liberal arts computing. So far, we have 60 responses, mostly from those identifying as being involved in liberal arts computing education.
I wanted to send a reminder out to this group in particular that if you haven't completed the survey yet and are willing, it is available at: https://washjeff.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3rASQI6L2M6UB1P
Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Professor of Natural Science and Mathematics Professor of Computer Science Noyce Science Center 1116 8th Avenue Grinnell College Grinnell, IA 50112-1690 United States of America +1 641-269-4208 Fax: +1 641-269-4984 http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~walker/
On 02/01/2018 03:16 PM, Joshua Gross wrote: > It's not for another two months, but is anyone else on this list > attending CCSC Central Plains? > > Josh > > -- > Dr. Joshua B. Gross > Professor of Computer Science, Blackburn College > [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Following on Doug's recent distribution of the final document for the SIGCSE 2018 special session, we discussed as a group over the summer that one of the places we could use some more information is about the type of voice a permanent group might provide for liberal arts computing so we can better understand that need.
The phrasing of "liberal arts computing educator/education" seems potentially confusing. Are we interested in educators/education at liberal arts institutions?
I suggest separating the last two questions. People may not consider themselves to be involved but fit into one of those categories, and that could be useful to know.
We might also add the option to enter the name(s) of institutions when someone checks off a relationship type. Would help us to get more information about the types of institutions that people consider to be liberal arts.
Regarding the phrasing, of "liberal arts computing educator/education" I've borrowed this language from the draft committee report for our special session. I believe we have been using this language to be inclusive not just of those at traditional liberal arts institutions but also those who may be doing liberal arts education within a college or sub-unit of a larger non-liberal arts institution. So, we're trying as a committee to focus more on a philosophy of education than the particular label an institution might have.
To address Madeline's concern, perhaps we can include the definition of "liberal arts computing" that the committee came up with at the top of the survey to help respondents understand what we mean? Or at least include it in the email when we send out the link?
I think the last two questions should be moved to the beginning as the first two questions, to help the survey respondent put the rest of the questions into context. It would also let them know that answering "None" to their involvement in liberal arts computing is okay,
Do we know exactly what we hope to learn from each aspect of the survey, to help guide us in how the survey is formed? If the goal is just to determine likely audiences, you probably need fewer questions. But I think our goals are probably broader.
I wonder about the current first question, and if we want a rating instead of a checkbox? I think it depends on what we hope to learn from each question. For the first question I would check off almost all of them, but some are much more common than others. Do
Thanks for the additional input Angela, Megan, and Madeline - a few replies to all three messages here.
Regarding Megan's question here about intent, the high-level goal is to get information about what people mean when they say they think it would be helpful for a permanent group to be a voice for liberal arts computing. We have a general sense from discussion on this list and the sessions held at SIGCSE last year that there is a desire for this to be part of a permanent group's charge, but while we have some good detailed information about the types
As promised below, I've got ahead and worked up a Qualtrics survey based on the feedback you all provided. You can view the survey at the following link:
I'll go ahead and clear any submitted responses before sending this out to the full SIGCSE list so feel free to play around with the survey as you like. One note, the yes/no question about whether you've had an opportunity to represent the liberal arts computing perspective (question 6) has a conditional next question for if the response is yes, so you might want to select "Yes" before going on to
For those of you breathlessly counting down the days until the deadline for submitting camera-ready copy to SIGCSE 2018, and wondering when I would get around to doing it for the liberal arts committee's special session (yeah right, something everyone's been waiting for...), I've just finished doing it. I've attached the final version if anyone's interested. It's almost identical to the version submitted back in August, except that I added a sentence to the description of session activities that suggested a little more specifically what kinds of questions we'd like audience feedback on. This was what I saw as the
I just submitted a SIGCSE 2018 special session proposal for the SIGCSE liberal arts committee -- it's attached for anyone who wants to see it. Special thanks to Amanda Holland-Minkley for proofreading and making suggestions, and Grant Braught for carrying out and analyzing the survey that figures prominently in the proposal. Thanks to everyone, of course, for helping with the committee's discussions.
Hello, liberal arts committee. It's time to talk about plans for SIGCSE 2018....
I'd like to use it to unveil and get feedback on a draft committee report. While we can certainly use more data, discussion, etc., I feel that a fairly clear sense of some findings has emerged, enough so to form the nucleus of a report. This can be much more definite by next February, and so I suggest that we propose another special session devoted to verbally presenting our findings and getting community reactions to them, preparatory to finalizing a written report for publication in Inroads or
I think your plan for another special session is great. I've gone into the Google Doc and added a couple of things/made some comments.
Looking at the report overall, should there be a section between "Core Questions" and "Conclusions" that is "Proposal"? Right now, there's a bullet list of the types of things a group might do, but if we would like action taken on this by SIGCSE/ACM, would it be appropriate for us to propose a structure and charge for the group? In part, I'm thinking that for the special session, much of what is
On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 1:37 PM, Amanda Holland-Minkley < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Doug et al - > > > > I think your plan for another special session is great. I've gone into the > Google Doc and added a couple of things/made some comments. >
I saw some of that as it was happening. Looks good. Thanks!
I'm considering proposing a panel about interdisciplinary team teaching in the CS classroom.
In my case, I'd be discussing an eight-credit games course for first & second year students co-taught with a professor in Film & Electronic Arts. Another colleague will be talking about teaching an introductory computing class with a Literature professor where they used Python to create natural language tools that were used to analyze changing language patterns in literary texts.
The liberal arts computer science consortium (LACS) had its summer meeting last week, and asked me to give a report on our committee's progress. The format was short report followed by discussion. For those interested, I've attached my slides from the "short report" part; you can also get them from Google drive at
The discussion suggested that LACS is very supportive of this committee spinning off a larger permanent group of liberal arts computing educators, which group would probably have many LACS members in it.
I guess I'll jump in here, mostly with a question.
I think we already have a strong case for the need for a permanent organization, and that case will likely be made stronger by the second, larger survey that has been suggested. In my opinion, this organization would ideally serve two purposes: networking within the liberal arts computing community, and providing leadership that could be our "voice" to others (others = non-liberal-arts computing + non-computing liberal arts + other others). Perhaps thinking about our intended audience will help us clarify our "voice." I think it's natural that it
I agree with Angela that we have good evidence that there is demand within the liberal arts computing community for a networking/support group focused on the unique challenges and solutions of the group. We have a good list of the contributions the group might make as summarized in Doug's slides and elaborated on in the report he put together after SIGCSE.
As another of the co-organizers of the SIGCSE 2017 BoF session on communicating about liberal arts CS and a member of LACS, I wholeheartedly concur. Well said.
Janet
Amanda Holland-Minkley wrote: > > I agree with Angela that we have good evidence that there is demand > within the liberal arts computing community for a networking/support > group focused on the unique challenges and solutions of the group. We > have a good list of the contributions the group might make as > summarized in Doug's slides and elaborated on in the report he put > together after SIGCSE. >
The minute I clicked "send" on my update re SIGCSE liberal arts committee plans, I saw that I referenced but didn't include a link to the SIGCSE 2017 notes. If anyone wants it, here's the missing link:
Based on feedback I've gotten since circulating notes on the liberal arts committee's SIGCSE 2017 activities, the sense seems to be that we should work towards a report focused on the core questions from our charge (is there a need for a voice for liberal arts computing programs, and is there a need for an ongoing group of liberal arts computing educators). We have quite a bit of evidence for a "yes" answer to the second of these just from our discussions so far. We might also want to do a "characteristics of liberal arts CS programs" survey, similar to
Seems to me it's time to start talking about whether the SIGCSE liberal arts committee wants to do another survey, and if so what should be in it.
Grant's survey last summer mainly concentrated on what computing programs look like at liberal arts colleges represented on this committee. The notes from SIGCSE 2017 suggest that there is a lot of interest in program profiles, so we might want to expand that study to a larger population.
Thanks Doug for getting this rolling again. Unfortunately I am not going to be much help until about mid-July. I am currently teaching a summer study-abroad course in London and thus far, while it has been great, it has been all-consuming. I get back to the office July 9 and can pitch in more at that point.
On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 3:26 PM, Amanda Holland-Minkley < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ... >
> As far as the larger question of, do we need a survey on these topics, I'm > wondering what our end goal is as a group. I know that this is a short-term > committee and that we need to assemble a report (this summer, I think?). >
Well, when I said "stay tuned" for more on the SIGCSE liberal arts committee's next steps I didn't think I'd have more so soon, but....
I realized that one of the things that came out of the notes from SIGCSE was a suggestion about a short paper we might find helpful, and I decided to use that as the start of a bibliography of things we might want to read. It's in another Google doc (as far as I can tell ACM mailing lists don't come with anything other than email for storing a group's work, but my institution uses
Hello, SIGCSE liberal arts committee members. Many of us got back from SIGCSE in March and discovered that our semesters or quarters will still going and needed our attention. But through that some of us have been slowly collating notes from the sessions at SIGCSE, and finally have a set to share. I decided that the easiest way to share was through a public Google doc, so you should be able to simply follow this link to see the notes:
Hello, liberal arts committee members. Hopefully I'll get to see lots of you at SIGCSE this week, particularly at some of the sessions we've planned. As far as I know, we have...
- The special session "Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges: A Status Report of the SIGCSE Committee" Friday at 10:45 in room 607.
Good news! I just got notice that the liberal arts committee special session (status report and audience discussion of issues) has been accepted. I'll be in touch, especially with those of you listed as presenters or helpers, as I prepare camera-ready copy and work out the details of the session itself. Thanks to everyone who helped shape the proposal. And thanks to all of you who are working on BoF proposals, too.
The liberal arts committee special session proposal has been submitted. I've attached the final version, which has a few small but helpful (thank you, commenters) changes from yesterday's draft. Thank you to everyone who helped with this, and with the committee's work in general.
Here is one more look at the liberal arts committee special session proposal for anyone who wants it. Many of you made suggestions, and I've incorporated most of them as small changes here and there in the text. (The one suggestion least incorporated was the very good observation that "Report of...." is not the most exciting way to start a title, yet I think SIGCSE program committees generally try hard to give special sessions to committees wanting to report, so I wanted it to be abundantly clear that this is such a report -- I changed the title to put
1. Title: Add "Status" to yield "Status Report of the SIGCSE Committee". The text indicate this is a work in progress, but readers scanning the program might think this is a final product.
2. In the time allocation, add "session participants" to the Small-group segment to yield "Small-Group Discussion (45 minutes, Session attendees & Committee leaders)"
Following discussions over the past few weeks, here is a draft proposal for a SIGCSE liberal arts committee special session at SIGCSE 2017. I certainly welcome suggestions on it from anyone, but most of you can be as much or as little involved in making such suggestions as you want. A few of you though (specifically, Grant, Henry, Alyce, Andrea, and Amanda) have talked with me in more detail about parts of it or otherwise got named as participants, so you might want to look at it more carefully.
My first thought is to change the title. Report of... is not a strong draw, I would think. Perhaps just call it something like "Computer Science in Liberal Arts Colleges." Then the description can say that it is a report of status from a committee.
Boots
L N Cassel, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University 800 Lancaster Avenue Villanova PA 19085-1699 http://csc.villanova.edu/~cassel
Hello, SIGCSE liberal arts committee. I hope you've been having good summers, in whatever form they've taken.
Following Grant Braught's survey earlier this summer, he and I have been having some conversations, as have Henry, Alyce, Andrea, and I. Some ideas about things this committee could or should do around SIGCSE 2017 have come out of those conversations, and I want to see what you all think of them.
I think that all three of these are great ideas. Since it sounds like one productive next step would be to brainstorm what some of the BoFs or sub-areas of interest would be, I thought I'd share the ones that I can think of that have come out of the conversations so far and Grant's survey:
On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Amanda Holland-Minkley < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Since it sounds like one productive next step would be to brainstorm what > some of the BoFs or sub-areas of interest would be, I thought I'd share the > ones that I can think of that have come out of the conversations so far and > Grant's survey: > > > > * Faculty hiring... > > > > * Enrollment pressures... > > > > * Communicating about CS in the liberal arts... > > > > * Curricular structures... > > > >
I am especially interested in the third suggestion -- Communicating about CS in the liberal arts.
Boots
L N Cassel, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University 800 Lancaster Avenue Villanova PA 19085-1699 http://csc.villanova.edu/~cassel
610 519 7341
On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 8:07 AM, Douglas Baldwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Amanda Holland-Minkley < > [log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> Since it sounds like one productive next step would be to brainstorm >> what some of the BoFs or sub-areas of interest would be, I thought I'd >> share the ones
--Janet DavisComputer ScienceWhitman CollegeSent from my "smart" phone, in haste, with auto-(in)correct
On August 16, 2016 at 2:05:09 PM PDT, Lillian (Boots) Cassel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:I am especially interested in the third suggestion -- Communicating about CS in the liberal arts. Boots L N Cassel, Ph.D.Professor and ChairDepartment of Computing SciencesVillanova University800 Lancaster AvenueVillanova PA 19085-1699http://csc.villanova.edu/~cassel610 519 7341 On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 8:07 AM, Douglas Baldwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Amanda Holland-Minkley <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Since it sounds like one productive next step would be to brainstorm what some of the BoFs
On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 9:31 AM, Walker, Ellen L. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> As am I. > > On Aug 16, 2016, at 6:29 PM, Janet Davis <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Me too. > > -- > Janet Davis > Computer Science > Whitman College > Sent from my "smart" phone, in haste, with auto-(in)correct > > On August 16, 2016 at 2:05:09 PM PDT, Lillian (Boots) Cassel < > [log in to unmask]> wrote: > > I am especially interested in the third suggestion -- Communicating about > CS in the liberal arts. > > Boots > >
Unfortunately I don't think I will be able to attend SIGCSE this year, which I am very disappointed about. I am teaching in China in the spring, and don't think I'll be able to get away.
Therefore I am afraid I will be of little use, but not out of lack of desire! If there is anything that I can do remotely I am absolutely willing. I did my undergraduate degree in a small liberal arts university (Drew) and I am very interested in where CS education in a liberal arts setting is going.
Sounds like there's a lot of interest in communicating about CS to liberal arts colleagues. Would someone like to volunteer to be a lead organizer for a BoF? Whoever does that would probably have a lot of helpers....
I too am interested in a BoF about "communicating about CS to liberal arts colleagues."
However, I am also interested in hearing/talking more about the fourth option from Amanda's list - curricular structures. I am especially interested in (1) balancing the traditional needs of liberal arts with the "new" needs of computing curricula, and (2) hearing about approaches to curriculum design from other schools that offer a computing degree that is not a Computer Science degree, and how those designs differ from a CS curriculum (with which I am more familiar).
I'd be happy to help with curricular structures topic for a BoF.
Henry
Henry M. Walker Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Professor of Natural Science and Mathematics Professor of Computer Science Noyce Science Center 1116 8th Avenue Grinnell College Grinnell, IA 50112-1690 United States of America +1 641-269-4208 Fax: +1 641-269-4984 http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~walker/
On 8/28/16 1:29 PM, Angela Berardinelli wrote: > I too am interested in a BoF about "communicating about CS to liberal > arts colleagues." > > However, I am also interested in hearing/talking more about the fourth > option from Amanda's list - curricular structures. I am especially
The SIGCSE program committee sent out a reminder about BoFs, posters, etc. a few days ago, which reminded me that the liberal arts committee was talking about 2 or 3 possibilities back at the end of August. As I recall, people were thinking about BoFs on...
- Soft skills and interdisciplinary connections - Communicating about CS to liberal arts colleagues - Curricular structures for CS in liberal arts settings
I continue to be interested in the Communicating about CS to liberal arts colleagues as a BoF. I would be happy to hear from others who might be interested in that.
Boots
L N Cassel, Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of Computing Sciences Villanova University 800 Lancaster Avenue Villanova PA 19085-1699 http://csc.villanova.edu/~cassel
610 519 7341
On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Douglas Baldwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Boots, I'd be happy to help put together a BoF proposal on this topic.
Janet
Lillian (Boots) Cassel wrote: > > I continue to be interested in the Communicating about CS to liberal > arts colleagues as a BoF. I would be happy to hear from others who > might be interested in that. > > Boots > > L N Cassel, Ph.D. > Professor and Chair > Department of Computing Sciences > Villanova University > 800 Lancaster Avenue > Villanova PA 19085-1699 > http://csc.villanova.edu/~cassel > > 610 519 7341 > > On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 10:51 AM,
A group of us have a draft together of the "Soft skills and interdisciplinary connections" BoF proposal. We're doing some revisions this week but I'll send a copy to the list early next week so everyone can see it. We're on track to have that submitted, though.
- Amanda
Dr. Amanda M. Holland-Minkley Associate Professor, Computing and Information Studies Washington & Jefferson College
I have been thinking about proposing a panel at SIGCSE related to something I posted here in March: How can CS1 courses better convey the fundamental ideas of CS (e.g., abstraction, algorithm efficiency and design, representing information, etc.) and connections to other disciplines in meaningful, compelling, and sustained ways (without sacrificing programming depth)? As I and a few others articulated, I think this is something that liberal arts colleges do especially well, and a panel might be a good opportunity for a few from this group to share examples with a wider audience.
I saw the following from a LACS member on the LACS mailing list this morning. I think it's a good example of why the CS education community needs some identified group that can provide knowledgeable voices on issues touching liberal arts CS programs. LACS plays that role now, mostly by default of being the only liberal arts CS group around, not because it necessarily wants the job. And the account below sounds like Jason, the person looking for advice, sort of stumbled on LACS by accident. So do we the SIGCSE liberal arts committee think there needs to be a
Thank you to everyone who completed the Computing Majors in the Liberal Arts survey that I had sent out a few months ago.
Now that the semester has ended I have had time to process the results and produce a summary. Below are links to a document summarizing the responses and an excel workbook.
Very interesting, and very thorough. Paints an interesting picture of computing as a liberal arts program -- although one of the most interesting things may be that there really doesn't seem to be a single picture, there's quite a range of programs represented. Thanks for doing this!
Reading over the summary got me thinking about lots of possible follow-ups. It would be very helpful in planning this committee's next steps to hear thoughts about which of these seem important to others, which you think we should work on, any inspirations you got about follow-up, etc.
I agree – a great and thorough summary document. Thank you for putting all of this together Grant!
I spent some time reading through the summary last night and I agree it would be interesting to find a way to compare some of these results to those of non-liberal arts programs. I pulled up the latest ACM Non-Doctoral Granting Departments in Computing survey to see if it might be useful (it’s at http://www.acm.org/education/ndc2014-15.pdf), and it does have a lot of data about enrollments, student composition, types of degrees, and faculty demographics, though it doesn’t seem to have the sorts of
Thanks to everyone who has completed the Computing Majors in the Liberal Arts survey. If you haven’t had a chance to do that yet, here is the link again:
Thank you to everyone that sent along helpful feedback on the survey draft that I circulated a few weeks back. I have finally incorporated all of the feedback that I received and have put the survey together with Google Forms.
It became very clear, very quickly that we have a wide diversity of programs organized in all sorts of creative and exciting ways. Which is great, unless you are trying to create a survey! So, I ask that though some questions may not fit your program exactly, please give the best answer that you can to each question,
Hello again, SIGCSE liberal arts committee. We've had some time now to get used to being a SIGCSE committee, and some ideas have gotten tossed around and are maybe being worked on. Hopefully we'll at some point (not necessarily now, I realize it's still early) hear more about things like the surveys that a couple of you talked about. Meanwhile, I'd also like us to think a bit about what our overarching goal(s) might be.
Grant's survey request reminded me to pass this along to the larger group.
I mentioned in the BOF meeting that as part of our external reviewers visit at Colby last fall I contacted a number of small liberal arts institutions to collect comparative information on enrollments, majors, staffing, and course loads. The purpose of this survey was to get a sense for how our institution compared relative to our peers in terms of all of these issues.
I think we need to be very careful in the things that we do as a group. There are many things that concern those involved in liberal arts! However, a good number of those things are not unique to liberal arts degrees. A simple example would be what language to use in CS1. Some things are concerns of small departments (which include a good number of liberal arts degrees), some things concern computing general education requirements, etc. However these things are not unique to liberal arts programs.
when I consider Cathy concerns, I think we still can move forward with the survey --- as long as we are clear that we are gathering perspectives about liberal arts programs and interests, independent of what issues might arise elsewhere.
There is no need to claim that everything about liberal arts is unique, although some elements are. If this committee is to be, among other things, a support and networking group for faculty at liberal arts colleges, then the committee should feel free to discuss any topics that liberal arts CS faculty may need to address. If insights from non-liberal-arts
The discussion earlier this week regarding the size of our majors and students having space in their courses of study to explore, connect, combine other areas and interests caught my attention. It got me to wondering just how similar or different programs are amongst this group who has self-identified as teaching Computing in the Liberal Arts? So being on spring break and thus feeling flush with time, I put together a small list of questions that I would like to turn into a survey for the group. In discussing this with Doug, he suggested that I send it
I don't know about other departments but we offer two versions of our major. One is the regular CS major, and the other is an interdepartmental major in which students can combine CS with any other discipline at the college. The course counts are different for those two programs. So in that kind of situation, would you want people to submit the survey twice, once for each program? I imagine this same question will be faced by those at institutions that offer both a BA and a BS degree. Would it make sense (I suspect so) for
An alternative to submitting the survey multiple times might be to provide a ‘matrix’ with a column for each major or minor option and the attributes of interest in the row dimension. That way, a given college could submit the survey once and avoid re-entering the common info.
At my school (Centre College), non-lab courses from all disciplines are 3 credits (3 lecture hours). CS 1 and Data Structures are 4 credits (3 lecture hours + 2 lab hours and the rest of our courses are 3 credits (3 lecture hours). As we're reviewing our own program and trying to realign it with the current ACM recommendations, we're debating combining content from different courses to form a couple more 4 credit courses so we can get a couple more things covered while not requiring additional courses. Do you need/want to get a sense of credits & contact hours
I think it would be useful to have the non-CS-but-computing-related majors included. That would allow analysis that limited to CS-only, but it could also help us understand how a CS program is affected by the presence of other programs. For example, the intro sequence faces additional constraints if it is shared across programs with different goals. There can also be consequences if there are significant differences among the population of students drawn to the different programs.
I'm not sure if this survey is the right place for it, but I would be interested in data on how various CS majors are structured to be supportive of their college-wide core requirements. For example, here at Hendrix, our introductory CS1 and CS2 courses fulfill the Quantitative Reasoning requirement and the Natural Science Lab requirement, and our senior-level capstone course fulfills the Writing Level II requirement. Since every college has their own definition of core requirements, it is not an easy checkbox question, but I think it is related to Cary's question about what outside obligations affect the
There was some really good discussion about what "liberal arts" means that now seems to have died down, so I'll try to summarize:
One key idea was that a liberal arts education has broad goals, i.e., it's for a career but also for membership in community, civic life, etc. Another take on breadth, from the perspective of curricula or student experiences, is that a liberal arts program provides room for second majors, minors, and interdisciplinary interests. Within computing programs, breadth is reflected in early exposure to the variety of computing topics and cross-disciplinary connections. What makes something a "liberal arts"
For what it is worth, Dartmouth offers a Bachelor of Arts major in Engineering. To get a B.E. normally takes an additional year.
Scot Drysdale
> On Mar 17, 2016, at 9:04 AM, Douglas Baldwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > There was some really good discussion about what "liberal arts" means that now seems to have died down, so I'll try to summarize: > > One key idea was that a liberal arts education has broad goals, i.e., it's for a career but also for membership in community, civic life, etc. Another take on breadth, from the perspective of curricula or
Also in the FWIW category: Calvin offers a 4-year BSE (Bachelor of Science in Engineering):
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engineering/
It’s a general engineering degree with concentrations in Chemical, Civil/Environmental, Electrical/Computer, and Mechanical Engineering. Students in the program take the same set of courses their first two years and then take specialty courses for their concentrations their final two years.
Also FWIW, Harvey Mudd College considers itself a liberal arts college as well as an engineering school: https://www.hmc.edu/about-hmc/
Janet
Joel Adams wrote: > > Also in the FWIW category: Calvin offers a 4-year BSE (Bachelor of > Science in Engineering): > > http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engineering/ > > It’s a general engineering degree with concentrations in Chemical, > Civil/Environmental, Electrical/Computer, and Mechanical Engineering. > Students in the program take the same set of courses their first two > years and then take specialty courses for their concentrations their > final two years. > > Cheers, > > -Joel Adams. > > > On
Greetings, and welcome (if you haven't already been welcomed) to the SIGCSE committee on computing education in liberal arts colleges. Thanks to everyone who came to our gathering at SIGCSE. I was pleasantly surprised at how big that was (35 - 40 people), and at the enthusiasm the folks there showed for the committee's job. Alyce Brady took some good notes on the conversation, which are the basis for this message.
Many thanks to Doug and everyone involved in starting this discussion.
With respect to some of the questions that form the core of this message, I hope we can be as inclusive as possible. I am in the Department of Computing Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova. We are not a small college, and some of the questions seemed appropriate for small colleges. That is a good question theme, but will not be for all of us.
Doug, thanks for giving us a charge! Let me try to kick things off on item (1) by asking a question.
I like the temporary definition of "liberal arts" in the committee's goals and focus statement. However, I am at an institution that is formally classified as a liberal arts college, fits the definition well, and has all of the suggested "highlights."
Here is the definition from our College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS): CLAS is designed to foster critical thinking, inspire creative solutions for a challenging and changing world and prepare you for a fulfilling career. We have 39 majors in our CLAS, as well as an option to define your own major. There are also some concentrations and minors (cognitive science, peace and justice, Irish studies, writing and rhetoric, for instance).
That seems like a very inclusive definition of the liberal arts. By way of contrast, how does your of Engineering define itself?
My Whitman colleagues would like the focus on critical thinking, but some would bristle at the notion of "prepar[ing] for a fulfilling career" without also mentioning civic life.
Janet
Lillian (Boots) Cassel wrote: > > Here is the definition from our College of Liberal Arts and Sciences > (CLAS): CLAS is designed to foster critical thinking, inspire creative > solutions for a challenging and changing world and prepare you for a > fulfilling career. > We
I agree that we should not limit it to “small”. I also think that where the program/department lies is also not a good indicator. There are some strong liberal arts CS programs (including mine) that reside in a school of engineering. University structural decisions are made for many different reasons.
Here is our CoE mission statement. It includes the liberal arts focus of the university also:
Villanova University’s College of Engineering is committed to an educational program that emphasizes technical excellence and a liberal education within the framework of the University's Augustinian and Catholic traditions. As a community of scholars, we seek to educate students to pursue both knowledge and wisdom, and to aspire to ethical and moral leadership within their chosen careers, their community, and the world.
I agree with your assessment, Cathy. Focus on outcomes is a good way to get to the essence of the liberal arts environment. The well-roundedness of our graduates is certainly a key element. I don't think small is necessary for that, but a commitment of a good relationship between the faculty and the students and a dedication to producing a well-rounded, well developed person is important.
All the definitions of liberal arts thus far offered seem useful and appropriate. But breadth of study strikes me as the most important.
Liberal arts is "Renaissance scholarship," a familiarity with and appreciation for the full spectrum of learning: humanities, creative arts, mathematics, sciences. An ideal liberal arts scholar can write code in the morning, compose an essay on history in the afternoon, and paint in the evening. It's a goal none of us reaches perfectly, but striving for it is an essential aspect of the liberal arts.
I think the relatively small size of the major vs. availability of space for electives, minors and maybe even a second major is important to include in the definition. Not only is this a defining characteristic, but also a reason why a group like this is particularly useful in light of ever-expanding lists of curricular requirements.
This is an exciting initiative. Thanks to the organizers!
Beyond encouraging students to pursue a well-rounded education, liberal arts colleges also have an opportunity to demonstrate how CS itself can be taught in a more "well-rounded" way. I am continually surprised to see universities that still just teach coding in their CS 1 courses. I think these first impressions matter, and tend to shape how students view the discipline and their roles in it. Many of us on this list have found ways to introduce broader concepts and exciting connections to other disciplines into our early courses. Perhaps these kinds
Jessen, I very much agree that CS itself can be taught in a liberal arts fashion. I agree that a liberal arts approach to CS emphasizes foundational concepts and interdisciplinary connections. I would add that it also can mean study of multiple perspectives within the discipline, e.g., through learning multiple programming paradigms, so that students can solve problems from multiple points of view.
Hi all – I’m excited about this conversation that we’re starting here!
I entirely agree that part of what makes something a liberal arts institution is the effect it has on one’s approach to teaching a topic, and the focus on interdisciplinary connections does seem important to me. In the most idealistic view, if I am teaching in a liberal arts setting, as an instructor I should walk into the classroom with a mindset that I am not just teaching my topic but I am also helping illuminate to my students how what they are learning relates to the rest
Welcome to the SIGCSE computing in liberal arts colleges mailing list. Thanks for joining; I and the other organizers are looking forward to productive discussions with you.
For those who will be at the SIGCE Symposium next week, we'll have a chance to meet each other face-to-face. We'll be in room 203 at 9:30 PM on Thursday, right after the reception. This will mostly be a chance for some of us to meet each other in person rather than a working meeting, so stop by or not as you are able. We have the room until 11:00, although how long
The SIGCSE Liberal Arts Committee special session proposal was just accepted for SIGCSE 2018! For anyone interested, here is the notification email -- mainly interesting, I suspect, for the reviews at the end, which certainly suggest some ideas for how we run the session, and maybe for what we say in our final report. Hope to see many of you at the session, or at least at SIGCSE, and thanks to those who helped write this proposal (I'll lean on some of you again to help run it).
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Robert Beck <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, Oct 6, 2017 at 9:55 AM Subject: NCWIT Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award To: Doug Baldwin <[log in to unmask]>, Henry Walker <[log in to unmask]>, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>, "[log in to unmask]" < [log in to unmask]>
Colleagues,
I need your help as the leaders of the SIGCSE Committee on Computing in Liberal Arts Colleges. Would you please spread the word about the Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award to all your constituents who teach CS at a liberal arts college. Nominations for the award can be made through the NCWIT website at
FWIW, I’d just like to second Doug’s sentiment below, to focus largely on the two apparent needs identified in the SIGCSE charge with likely resolutions to those items being to form a permanent group. I totally agree that taking more of a broad, open-ended approach is not likely to lead to much (and I, for one, think that the two identified needs are “real”, as I think many or all of you do). Some kind of middle road might work, but I personally feel like a more concrete focus is a better approach.
The focused approach makes sense to me as well and I agree that the work we've done makes the case that there is a role for a permanent group. I actually think that the amount of interest we heard in getting more samples of how different liberal arts CS programs have adapted CS2013 makes a pretty good case for Doug's item (1) below that there's a desire to have an ongoing liberal arts voice in curricular conversations, as well as all of the good evidence we have for item (2) that people really want a way to communicate with each
