On Tuesday, February 12th, 2018, the Faculty Senate at the College of Charleston cast the final vote to approve significant changes to the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree program.
“Instead of creating a separate, niche cyber security degree, we instead want all of our computer science majors to have an understanding of the technical aspects of cyber security.” said Sebastian van Delden, chair of the computer science department. “This is an exciting evolution of an already very strong program.” he added.
The College of Charleston’s cyber security club is currently the reigning champion of the Palmetto Cyber Defense Competition, which is sponsored by SPAWAR. Introducing this coursework into the degree program will only strengthen this pedigree.
In addition to an advanced course on cyber security, courses in databases and advanced algorithms were also added to the curriculum. Furthermore, an introductory cyber security course and a capstone have also been added to the Computer Information Systems degree program, also housed in the computer science department.
“Starting next year, when our students engage regional tech companies in their capstone course, the teams will be comprised of computer science, data science, and computer information systems majors. This more closely emulates ‘real-world’ agile development teams and better prepares our students to enter the work force.”
The changes to the computer science degree will also bring the program in compliance with the new ABET accreditation standards, which were adopted last summer.
Total undergraduate enrollment in the computer science department surpassed 500 students this year, making it one of the biggest in the state, growing over 250% in the last seven years in terms of enrollment as well as in number of graduates.