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"Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Fri, 6 Dec 2002 12:32:17 -0500
Reply-To:
Michael Feldman <[log in to unmask]>
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Michael Feldman <[log in to unmask]>
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<[log in to unmask]> from "Wes Groleau" at Dec 06, 2002 08:32:21 AM
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[said Wes]
>
> There are at least ten schools in the USA that offer degrees in
> Software Engineering.  Do any of those also offer Computer Science
> as a distinct major?

I don't have specifics, but in at least some of those cases, I
suspect they offer both majors. Sometimes SE will be in the
engineering school while CS will be in the arts/sciences college.

Interesting politics in some cases. Many CS people, whose
departments are, for historical reasons, NOT in engineering,
are doing perfectly respectable SE but cannot call it by that
name because the engineering school has exclusive rights to
the term "engineering". that is one big reason why I've
always advocated looking at what programs are doing, not at
what they call themselves.
>
> One of them is Monmouth.  Is Rick Conn still listening?

Rick has not been at Monmouth for a number of years. Monmouth
is one of those places where CS and SE are separate (and, to a
large extent, *competing*) departments. In my view, that is a
waste of faculty and other resources. But everyone is too focused
on the names, and the content and budget suffer.

I do not recall whether Monmouth's SE degree is at bachelors
or masters level; I tend to think it's a masters program,
focused mostly on working people who go back for an advanced
degree. Monmouth University is in West Long Branch, NJ, not
far from Fort Monmouth, which is a hotbed of Army R&D. So it's
not surprising they  have programs that would appeal to defense
staff and contractors.

(As it happens, I know the place because it's in my wife's home
town. Her father was an Army civilian EE, who spent most of his
career at Fort Monmouth and taught in the evening at the college.)

When I last heard from Rick, he was in the Atlanta area, working
at Lockheed Martin and teaching evenings at Kenesaw State.
>
> As for the claim that software engineering is not
> "real" engineering--that's true _in_practice_ of
> most people that call themselves software engineers.
> But it can be done in a manner that is true engineering,
> and is done that way by some.
>
Which is yet another reason why we ought to focus on the contents
rather than the name of the container.:-)

One more point - the most recent Communications of the ACM has
a REALLY interesting special section on the ongoing debate about
SE education and especially about licensing/certification issues.
They got all the key players, on all sides, to contribute.
There are very good points to be made on all sides. Especially
interesting is the background of ACM's opposition to licensing.

Anyone interested in this field ought to read it. Please don't
comment on it speculatively - read it first!

Mike Feldman

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