Accepted Student Celebration - Computer Science Presentation Webinar

Headline.

I said, how are you?

Yeah.

Good, how are you? I'm trying to figure out lighting in this room lighting over my.

Shoulder looks

Too strong.

The better.

Yeah.

Is that better?

Always the challenge that does appear. Better yet you have some natural daylight, so that's good.

Yeah, there's a little almost too much natural daylight actually was even he.

I'm trying to get set up 'cause there's some stuff. There are some opening stuff here that is, I just want to get right so I have written down.

Sure.

Just sort of the initial stuff that you know the stuff that's more.

Specific to.

What they do here? I'm fine with, but.

The initial stuff I wanted, you know, welcoming stuff. It's just a little sensitive to get right.

I'm.

Is that what you're going to say?

Yeah, a little chat here that I'll just welcome everyone and tell them to make sure they're using fire Fox Chrome refresh their page if they can't hear us. We found that those are a few of the common fixes I will. I'm actually just going to have this message in the chat right now to research that to just so everyone can see the message when they log in.

Yep.

So now we have broadcast video on.

Yes, and I don't know.

So should I put control slides or should I wait on that yet?

You should try it now, yet click control slides and try clicking around. Just make sure nothing's frozen, uhm?

And if you want to, yeah, I can see if you click around I can definitely see that which is good.

OK, so this is the one OK.

And I have a dual monitor, so I'm trying to. I looked at the side, but.

Yeah, well I do too. and I it's clear that I'm looking at a dual monitor if I'm not careful.

Yeah.

So I want to do that very little fact. I'm actually moving my monitor so they're almost on top of each other.

The weather

So.

So you can control 2. Is that right?

I wasn't planning on it because when.

Why not?

Um, two people try to do the same exact thing at the same exact time. It sometimes freezes. Teresa and I were talking about that, so I won't control.

But I did see all of your slides from the mock session.

OK.

Like

But yeah, so I will be engaging the questions that come in. Um, I'll just be here, but muted until the questions and I'll feel those to you. And if anything comes in through chat that I can easily answer, I might just answer them. Or, you know, and reiterate them to the group later.

OK, so you are going to be talk first.

No no.

Yeah.

No, I'm talking OK, so that Guy Clark click on close caption.

OK then.

One more.

Good morning.

You don't have to click on that. That's just for folks who might not be able to hear, so it actually records everything that we say into text. I mean, you can click it and she, it'll, it's actually just already capturing what we're saying, but you don't have to close caption. And again, I'm Lauren from admissions.

You knew.

Having said that.

Nice to meet you. So yeah I will. I will be quiet until the questions.

There.

And.

But Megan disappeared.

Yes, of course.

And one thing Teresa mentioned just to remember is when that video plays to mute your own microphone, check for that feedback yet.

Yep.

Perfect.

Yes.

I was just gonna keep my video of.-

That's fine, Megan, thank you.

Thanks.

OK, good luck. See you later.

OK.

And while you're talking, uhm, I might put my video of- so I can be typing. Or would you like me on the whole time?

OK.

No, you can put you. You can get your video off, so just one thing, uhm?

I don't actually see this starting timer.

Oh, there it is.

Up at the very top, it should say events scheduled, yet it's kind of small text above our pictures here.

Where do?

It did.

So the event scheduled yeah and then once it hits 0 weight that 20 seconds or so.

And then.

Essentially, what happens right at 11? Everyone comes into the chat and it takes just a little bit for everyone to enter the room, essentially.

OK, so if they enter right now, what are they seeing?

There they actually can't enter till 11, so if they click on the link right now, they won't see anything until exactly 11:00 o'clock.

Yes.

OK, so at 11:00 o'clock they see this, and then I'm going to click on the video after 20 seconds. So why do you want me to say anything before then?

Um?

Yeah, I mean if you just have like a welcome this welcome slide right here. You know just.

To a 2 second welcome and then click on to the next slide.

Yep.

To play that.

OK.

Yeah.

So should I say something that we're going to start with the presentation campuswide presentation, and then we'll start in on the computer science presentation?

Yeah, that would be great. That would be great, yeah?

OK, we will do that.

Perfect.

I have been not I am more nervous about this presentation that I've been on. Any presentation in a long time.

Thank you.

Appreciate it but.

So you'll be great. It'll be great, it's great.

Yep.

Yep.

And you know what? Everyone is in the same boat everyone's working remotely, you know? Uhm, so we're in this together.

Yeah no, I I we are Oh my God 161 registered 460 one wow.

That's awesome.

It is, it's really great and I think even more students can take advantage of our programming now that it's remote. Fortunately, we can't be on campus, but.

Right, well, none of us can so.

Well, I know.

Just like you're talking to your friend or your computer.

More and I've been doing this for 30 two years. I actually go and give the usually give this presentation and Erin 308 without even thinking about it.

Got it, got it.

Which one like 2 hours on modifying Kurt slides, putting in some of my own.

So, uhm.

So anyway.

That's great alright. So one minute, um.

I will turn off my camera for now, and if everyone just remembers to mute, unless you're talking, that will just limit the background noise as well. For anyone else on here.

OK, well we do have two students joining us. I don't see them at the moment, but they will join in and answer questions and they're great.

Perfect yeah, I think I see Jen, you and Phillip.

Oh

Phillip is one of the students genuine. Megan's counter is colleague and an school of science hub in works directly for computer science.

So you want me happy?

Oh perfect. Oh, and I see you heard her to hurt is here.

Her to it, is it here to?

Her to OK.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And so it yeah.

Hello guys, thank you.

OK, 30 seconds.

All right here, turn and Phillip are you. Make sure you have your audio off until it's time for you to click audio and video on. When I put up the slide that introduces you. OK, thank you.

Hello everyone.

So I'm professor Chuck Stewart. I'm headed the computer science Department and I will be speaking to you, but we're going to start here in just a minute with a just a few seconds with a campuswide video with two presentations.

Um?

Uh, just a couple of notes. This runs best on fire Fox and Chrome. If you have those available, it would be great. Make sure you're on them. Also, you may actually refresh your display.

Um, if you can't hear the audio.

Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and I see lots of people are saying Good morning Hello.

And that's great. Really appreciate it. And I'm very glad you're here so.

We have multiple things going on today. Um, so let's get started with this video and I'll be talking to back with you in about 10 or 12 minutes.

Good morning, my name is Jon Wexler and I'm the vice president for enrollment management, key Rensselaer. On behalf of our president, doctor, Shirley and Jackson are faculty or staff are soon. Cinnamon let me welcome you. Tori, admitted student celebration virtually First off.

We hope all of you are staying safe and sound during these trying times.

Well, we regret that you're not able to visit us in person on camp.

Hello and good morning, just making sure everybody is with us. We right now we have 312 guests online so welcome.

So we welcome you during this very difficult time.

For accepted students, it's a time of congratulations. However, for what you've accomplished.

In a quiet looking ahead beyond our current crisis, to which you can accomplish in the coming years, we will need everyone of you.

So I'm Chuck Stewart. I'm a professor and head of the computer Science Department.

I've been here 32 years and I have to say I love this place. I'm proud of our faculty. I'm continually amazed.

By the community event Brite incredibly hard working and technically fearless students.

I hope you join us.

So this talk is a hybrid of the presentation made by the Dean of science, but it is an specialization to computer science.

After the main presentation, there will be two things. One I will do an online question and answer and we will be joined by two current Rensselaer students.

In addition, we will have a.

Separate session where you can sign up, register to talk 1 on one with a current student were using an application written by one of our sophomores and it's been tested out heavily over the last week and there. About 40 current students who will be waiting to talk to you. They'll be available from 12:00 to 2:30 Eastern Time today, and they will also be opportunity to sign up for.

I'm session later on if you can't meet now or the well if you want to meet later. It's very important of course to meet one on one we wish you could do it on campus, but these are indeed extraordinary times.

OK, so this is the welcome and congratulations for being invited to join the class at Rensselaer 2024. So there's two very exciting things about your graduation year.

First of all, this will be the 200th anniversary of the first graduation from RPI students.

Were the oldest technological University in the country and were quite proud of this.

So if you can see in this picture on the lower left.

There is the Dean of the school of science, Kurt Brenneman Associate Dean Sabella Dolly, who's a professor of computer science and also a winner of the Trustees Outstanding Teaching Awards, an counseling awards, and this is Lee leg and the other associate Dean of School of science. Now the 2nd event is a solar Eclipse.

On just six weeks or so before your graduation.

And as you can see, the center of it goes across Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and up through the Atar on dax.

The edge of the total eclipse is just north and West of campus and campus is right about here.

So we will be fairly complete in our eclipse, so exciting things for 2024.

We have a community of very, very strong students. If you look at some statistics here, the average SAT scores 70% in the top percent. 10% of the Class, 35% identify as female in computer science. That number is 25% and that is almost doubled over the last six or so years, so we're proud of that. Even though we have more work to do in that area.

And we'll talk about that a little bit later. Computer science students you should all congratulate yourself. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but in fact every year you are the strongest group of students among any major at Rensselaer.

Very, very impressive.

So you're really coming to join a community of scholars, a community of very strong students. We also have an amazing faculty. Now, these ain't individuals are all professors of computer science, so starting with the upper left, that's professor barred Cutler who teaches.

Um?

Who works on graphics and visualization, but she's also leaning this a student run or a student written effort to develop a online course submission grading.

Community discussion board and we will talk about this project called Somity later on.

Carlos Varela

Um is a full professor. He is known for his work in distributed computing, and he also is working on distributing computation among planes in as their flying so that they can gather information that can be used to control the plane more effectively.

George slow to here is an expert on graphs, graphs, or fundamentals construct in computer science, but his graphs are on the size of billions of nodes.

Professor LeBron Cha is an expert on social networks or social choice and computation. An AI and the relationship between AI and economics.

Stacy Patterson is an expert on distributed computation and the Internet of things, which is when all the different devices the sensors in your cars.

Are connected to perform computations and control behaviors.

Vasher young she gal is an expert on.

Networks, and in particular the resilience of networks, which of course is a crucial question right now.

Professor on a milanova is an expert on.

Program analysis and security. Anna lot of her recent work is detecting when code has been tampered with. It's very amazing stuff and finally we have our leader of our effort in large scale machine learning and that is professor Alex Gittins. So those are at aid of just 26 faculty in computer science and we hope by the time you arrive we will be over 30.

So computer science is part of the larger school of science which has a wide range of activities and majors and minors, and you can see some of them listed.

Um?

Including.

Very interesting stuff on Astro Biology and biology in high stress environments and we will be talking later in the presentation or I will be talking about information technology and web science. And of course the major focus will be on computer science.

So it's very important to think about what happens after graduation. Where do our alumni go? So this is a snapshot for the school of science. About half started employment right after graduation. In fact, that number is quite a bit higher in computer science.

Smaller percentage go to Graduate School, many of them actually stay for Masters. It degrees at RPI and we will talk about that a little bit later. Students are involved in research and co-ops in projects. Then you can see on the right here.

A wide range of just some of the companies.

Um students join for Co OPS internships, full time jobs and also some of the University students go for Graduate School.

Sometimes in one on one discussions, parents ask me.

Um?

Where'd where do our students go? and I ask where do you wanna go? 'cause our students go everywhere?

Here's the cool thing you saw, that $79,000 average starting salary. The average starting salary in computer science last year was $96,000.

Very important to emphasize that this is about a return on investment.

And some of our alumni.

Even go to outer space.

So this is read wise men who flew in the shuttle several years ago an actually spoke with faculty and students on campus while he was in space.

This is a summary of the school of Science degree program, the major courses.

Um, usually about, well, actually. I want to back up for just a second. I remembered something I wanted to say here this week. There's a second thing I want to emphasize about this return on investment, and that is why people come here. Companies come here to recruit. They come here to recruit for it because of technical skills, but also technical leadership and very much because the fearlessness of the technical fearlessness of Rensselaer Alumni, our students are among the first that companies come after.

On a daily and weekly basis, I get phone calls and emails asking How can I hire your students?

And that's that. That is really the Rensselaer Rensselaer difference. We have excellent students or community of wonderful students and breed a culture of Fearlessness and applying to ask approaching technical problems.

Can your degree program? This is a summary for the school of Science, so I won't spend too much time on it, but there's a distribution of major courses.

Uh, in your specific to your major science, Humanities and social science.

And culminating experience.

This is an communication requirement. I'll spend more time talking about these when we get to the specifics of computer science.

Housed in the computer science but really Institute wide is the information technology and Web Sciences program. It is ranked number one in the country by college choice and it's really a less that deep, less technical than computer science. It includes some computer science courses and then a range of other courses in management in web technologies and other topic areas.

So that it has a broader base, but it's less technically focused in computer science.

There's a Cora Nightie.

And that core includes accord introduction some web courses, computer science one and data structures, and a few other more cultural and social logical studies.

That's the core of ITWS. And then there's engineering science, humanities, and has concentrations. These concentrations or 8 courses.

Many of these many students who major in.

ITWS concentrate in computer science and actually pick up computer science is a dual major, so that's one option and we will talk much more about dual major soon.

We also focus on a variety of new methods in how to teach.

Science and technology. This starts out with the bridge scholars program for students who wanted more of a slow ramp on calculus and physics, so that's a mixture of on campus and mostly off campus activities throughout the summer before starting.

We have several strong mentoring programs. The I persist mentor this logo you see to the right.

Is for, uh, basically a tutoring program, a small group tutoring program led by an undergraduate in calculus, chemistry and physics.

Computer science has what we call programming mentors.

These are students who help in Labs.

Office hours an online discussions starting his students are hired as early as second semester freshman year, though students who have done very well. It's a competitive program. We have 125 a semester.

And students either paid or get credit, and they're the ones who are there. 1 on one to help you understand the problem. To review what the solutions you're trying to come up with to find bugs. To fix things to explain concepts.

It's very important and we have strong backing from the the Dean of Science and from the Provost and the president for our program.

The last thing I want to mention here is submitting.

I mentioned it a little bit before submitting is written by our own students, led by Professor Barb Cutler, who was the first professor I highlighted a few slides ago.

It originally started out as a way for students to submit their programs, have them checked online, run against test cases.

The next step is it provides a way for teaching assistance to get access to your code so they can review it, critique it, and grade it for you so you get both the objective tests and the grade and critique from that EA giving that EA more time to focus on that critique. But some it has grown into much more than that.

There are. There's a. There's a grading distribution server. There are ways at places where we post assignments. We post lecture notes and we post recorded lectures, and most importantly now there's chat rooms.

For online discussion boards and in particular during this time of completely online education, the submit the team has implemented a tool where students.

Come into the office hours. Virtual office hours. Enter a queue and then get picked up one up for one on one discussions by TAS in programming mentors so that you can share your screen. Look at code, ask questions and have a one on one discussion and really try to mimic some of the effort that we do online or individually. We're trying to do it online as well.

So big things are mentoring program in our use of submitting really made a very relatively easy transition to online education.

There are a lot more than that in our curriculum, and being a computer science major.

First thing I want to emphasize his dual majors.

So a dual major is where you satisfy the degree requirements for two majors.

And you receive a degree that says you have both your a major in, for example computer science and it WS or computer science and mathematics, or computer science and computer and Systems Engineering.

So you have fulfilled the requirements of both majors. That doesn't mean, for example.

If one major requires 4 math courses in the other requires five that you have to take nine, it just means that along your courses you satisfied both degree requirements, about 30 to 35% of the computer. Science majors have a dual major. The most. The biggest ones are the ones I mentioned. Math.

ITWS computer in systems engineering, but you're going to hear from students today who are dual majoring in psychology as well. Students can minor in other areas.

Next thing I want to mention is this coterminal, which is essentially you can get a Masters degree and your bachelors degree in five years. Important thing is financial aid continues for the 5th year.

So we have a strong Masters Coterminal Masters in computer science.

Some students think well, I won't just get a dual major. I'll get 2 degrees where you actually have to not only get the requirements of both degrees, but 100 or excuse me, but 30 additional credits.

And we actually strongly advise against that if you have the room in time to get the additional coursework, we strongly recommend that you do the Coke Terminal instead.

So again, lots of computer science majors, dual major.

Some of them pick up minors. You'll hear about that later from one of our students.

And if you have extra time and extra interest, you can get a bachelors and Masters in five years and students who transfer in or able to take more courses sometimes do it in four or four and a half.

Students get heavily involved in research.

Both during the academic year in summer.

Co-ops in internships are very important both during the arch and afterwards, and I'll talk about that. And then there's a very strong interest in.

Starting companies we have startups in all sorts of areas including cyber security.

So our students are constantly thinking about this.

So little bit about the arch. It is a focused summer after you're usually after your sophomore year, so your rising junior. You get more interactive experience with faculty and a chance to hang in the area.

Capital District is beautiful in the summertime.

And then during your junior year, you have one semester that's called away where you might do an internship or even more interesting, you could do a Co-op, say in the spring and summer.

Of your junior year and you really get a six month experience and there are many companies who are very interested in this because they want more than just the three months of a Co op. Other option is you could do is say a Co op in the fall and then another Co op in the summer.

There is study abroad internship research and service as well, but most of our students do internships and co-ops. I'm another comment about the internship. You will often see two different companies. You will do it in the fall, say at one company, and then in the summer afterwards is another and you get to experience two different corporate cultures. Very useful.

The research Rensselaer is heavily focused on global challenges. The most obvious one for Computer Sciences, AI and machine learning. And of course that is important both for the core technology, but even more so for the ways it's being applied.

Very interested in in types of molecules and materials. Heavily use of machine learning and compute and AI and this, and there's a lot of a lot of interest among the faculty.

Power, renewable energy, healthy planet again strong interest at Rensselaer.

One thing you might hear about is this eventually ramous supercomputer. It's an artificial intelligence computer.

Um, to get a little geeky 252 units.

Each unit has two powerful processors and six GPUs. If you don't know what this means are really don't have a feel for it. Now that's just fine. We don't expect that, Fortunately, uh.

Graduates have access to do this through research and through courses.

I have six students currently working on it, four of whom.

We're either undergraduates, orco terminals, and this is currently moving toward heavy use enco VAT 19 vaccine research. We've opened it up for projects throughout the throughout the country.

So we're very proud of this very easy to get access to it, and students are using it all the time.

You heard our student speaker talk about.

Hum.

Student Speaker talk about Lake George.

The Lake George is one of our global challenges, were focused on freshwater and maintaining the integrity of fresh water systems. And so there is a study program at Lake George.

It is called the Jefferson project because apparently Thomas Jefferson visited once and called it the most beautiful Lake in the world.

If you get a chance to visit, it's about 45 or 50 miles North of campus. It is stunningly gorgeous. It's got Atar on deck mountains all around it and it's a long beautiful clean strip of Lake heavily instrumented by Rensselaer scientists and engineers and a lot of data analytics goes on and its effort combined with the local community with IBM and with Rensselaer.

This one is not so much computer science, but it's Super Cool. Professor Karen Rogers is the leader of the Rensselaer Astro Biology Research Program. She's an expert on extreme environments. She's gone to all sorts of cool places and just finished a a.

Petition to some firm.

Cat collecting samples from thermal vents deep under the ocean.

So now we're going to focus on the computer science degree program an I'll slow down a little bit here. So first of all, there are eight named courses, six of them in your first two years, and after taking them, You are those six courses. You are very well prepared for internships, the kind of things technical questions you're asked for. Internships you're very well prepared after those six, there's two more in the junior senior.

Year one is offered during the arts and that's operating systems.

Beyond those eight courses, there's four capstone or option courses, and you have to choose them from among four areas or choose them from research courses. So the four areas are AI and data theory, computing systems and computer vision, graphics and robotics so.

You just. There are lots of flexibility in courses and some courses count in multiple areas. For example, I teach the computer vision class.

And that counts in both AI and data. An in computer vision graphics in machine learning Arif, computer vision and graphics.

As a computer science, you have to take 7 math courses or 7 science courses, four of which are math. Three of them are science.

Then there's the usual six humanities courses.

There's room for at least six free electives, and that's often enough to pick up a dual major.

There's a communication requirement, one of which is in the humanities, Humanities, Arts and social science and wanted, which is in computer science, and we have about 6 or 7 courses. I don't know the exact number that faith can fulfill this requirement.

And that leaves you with 228 credits needed for graduation.

So during that, if you think about it, that is 816 credit semesters or 8 four course semesters. So there's no need to take extra courses.

You just it, and if you don't have any AP credit, you don't have to take anything to get started.

Uhm, you just take four 4 credits or 8 four credit semesters and you're done.

So.

There's.

There are computer science is the biggest major on campus, and of course the best major with the smartest students.

Just ask me ask me if I'm biased. The answer is of course yes, but we very strongly encourage you to get involved in the computer science community.

Find your peer group.

Find that group of students you want to hang out with. You want us to help each other with your homework and understanding concepts.

You really need to find your crew and so here I'm going to talk about five different organizations that are centered in the Department that students are heavily involved with.

The first is the Center for Rensselaer Center for open source.

And it was started about 12 years ago by an alarm.

Had made money in a mapping company.

So it is a semester by semester projects. You can propose your own project. They're all open source. You form teams of usually three to six students. Some teams have as much as 8 to 12.

Some of these are just exploring new ideas. Some of them are joining some of the world wide open source efforts, some of them are sub continued projects through that have been persisting for 4, five or six years. So many of course is one of them, yaks is yet another.

Uh, course scheduling software an that's what almost all Rensselaer students used to figure out.

Figure out their courses for this semester. There is bus scheduling software we've had support from Google and we've had students start to contribute to our projects from all over the world.

Typically, 150 students are a semester, are involved in Arcos.

So the second one I want to talk about is the Association for computing machinery, women's organization ACM W.

You're gonna hear a little bit about it from here to one of the students.

But it is a combination of formal and informal mentoring with.

Um faculty.

Uh.

Trips to the Grace Hopper Celebration of women in computing. We've sent about 25 students a year.

Um tech talks from companies willing to hire, and most recently, the leaders of ACM W have formed an informal mentoring program where current students are connected one on one with existing students or with new students.

And this is part of the reason our our number or percentage of women in computer science is more than doubled over the last six or so years, and the overall number is grown by a factor of 4.

We are also heavily well known throughout the world for our security club RPI sack.

And this isn't a group that was started. It's almost entirely student run. It was started, but through the suggestion of one of our professors, bulent Yener and some of his graduate students. But the students then took off and they run it themselves.

They place in the top three in many worldwide capture the flag competitions, and if you're not familiar with those, those are basically self contained, offensive and defensive security competitions where you try to break into other computers and you try to prevent.

Other teams from breaking into yours. It's heavily focused on building skills.

In this all important area cyber security.

They want some fun prizes like this basketball, but they've also won prizes like checks for $10,000 that they used to support their efforts. They've been invited to competitions all over the world, Taiwan, China, Central Europe, and then of course all over the United States and Canada there, and they are also known for this course. Modern binary exploitation that is open source courseware that's used all over the country in the world.

Even companies are using it.

And there's the RPI sack has a very strong alumni network and there are startups in downtown Troy.

Formed by archives alarms.

The next organization is hack RPI, which is the hackathon club.

Again, students started in student run.

We've had first year students become leaders of hack RP. last November they had over 400 purpose of participants in there. In the hackathon event, our next event is scheduled for mid October or mid November.

And they're looking at both online and offline versions. They're planning for global challenges, including analysis of pandemic data.

And this is great for recruiting an intern ships. We gather students from all over the northeast in some from all over the country. Alot of the students they were Rensselaer students and what's interesting is we get companies who will either come to both the career fair.

And the hackathon or companies who will only come to the Hackathon and then become sponsors.

So very exciting and students can join the Hackathon and participate in their first semester. He ran it as I said, become leaders very, very important.

Coding and community is a serve.

This organization started by Melena Melena Gonzalas, who is graduating this year.

But she has passed on the leadership of this to underclassmen.

Teaching basics of programming to underserved population. That's the goal. The goal is not necessarily to get them to be computer scientists and software engineers, but to really did develop skills and in programming and understanding computation.

Their mentors in the New York State Science and technology program, and they also hold weekly events.

For Troy Middle and high school students who were just off the those schools are just off the eastern edge of campus.

The last one I want to talk about is the Honor Society.

Epsilon Pi Epsilon. They have a you are admitted through a combination of academic accomplishment following the intro to algorithms class, which is scheduled for the 4th semester, but many take it in the third. They have tech talks, programming competitions. They often set up faculty for competitions with each other. For example, choose which choices editors.

Is best or, say, computer science trivia and with that the challenge is always can the students beat the faculty?

Won't tell you who wins, just the older folks, really a lot of strong alumni networking like there is with our clubs and they have their own meeting space in the Amos Eaton Building.

And I just want to point out in that Amos Eaton Building on the 1st floor there is both the Epsilon Pi Epsilon meeting space as well as a much larger community space for students to get together during office hours or for group team efforts an are advising Center for computer science. Is there as well.

So we want you to come join us to expand our impact. We have excellent faculty, were focused on global challenges.

We have outstanding students.

Really must stress that enough. What you're coming here to do is join with the faculty, but really form built. Joining a community of brilliance, hardworking, technically fearless students.

We have state of the art facilities strategic partnerships for example with AI right now where they are providing us with funding to build up faculty in AI in machine learning. So please come join us and do great things.

All right?

So we're going to transition to two things here.

One is will continue with.

Question and answers, but the other thing is we're going to. You're going to be able to talk 1 on one with current existing students, so I want to introduce you first before we do that to three students. One is the developer of this get app where you can sign up and be paired up with a current student, and that's Frank Matranga, so he is monitoring that site so he's not with us during this competition this discussion.

He's a major in computer science and IDWS, so he's a dual major. He's a sophomore. He's heavily involved in a number of organizations, including being a lead mentor and coordinator of the Center for open source.

So there is 10 to 12 lead mentors and coordinators in Frank as uh.

Sophomore is one of them.

His hometown is the Bronx, NY and one of his fun facts that he contributed.

Is that his gym classes were in Central Park in his art, classes were at the Met.

Wow, that's kind of cool.

OK, now we also have student panelists were going to help me answer questions and I'm going to have them jump in and join them. Introduce themselves right now. So we're going to switch. And here's her to 1st, so here are you on with us. There you are.

Yeah, can you hear me?

Perfect.

I think the answer is yes, I can hear you here to so please proceed.

OK perfect so hi, my name is her to I'm a computer science and psychological science dual major, currently a senior class of 2020. I am a member of upe. I'm currently serving as the president finishing my year. I'm also a member of a C&W which is the women in Computing Group, an chef which is the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. My hometown is Tijuana, Mexico, and fun fact is I dyed my hair over by different colors during college.

Very fun.

Thank you here to Alright Philip, you wanna go ahead?

Can't hear you. You're muted at the moment.

Can't hear yourself.

OK.

Will give him just a second.

You can read his information there, um, so he's one of the students who is picking up two minors. So he's a computer science major with minors in math and psychology.

But you back.

Still.

We've been doing our best with this Phillip. We can't hear you at the moment.

OK, I'm in the interest of time. We're going to move on a little bit an hopefully Phillip can come back and join us for the question and answer.

So computer science events from now until 2:30 Eastern Daylight Time, we're going to start with a question and answer session that will be right here.

The app that I mentioned that Frank has written.

You can reach it either through this website RPI ASC dot web dot app.

Or if you wanna join through a tablet or smart phone, you can just click on this QR code.

So that will do the question and answer right here now live.

And that you can also. They'll be there, especially until 2:30. There is about 40 students who will be in and out during the afternoon. So if you can't meet with somebody right away.

Just come back in a little bit.

Throughout April you can go onto this app and still schedule one on one meeting so you can sign up and say I would like to meet. This is a good time. Here's how I would like to meet and we accept all sorts of different online media.

Um on Monday there's a panel that you can sign up through the school of our through our website and go to the admissions website. Or you can go straight to the admissions website. So that's a women in computer science panel. I think there's about 6 current students who can answer your questions, and then we also have weekly meet a professor. Events. We've had two of them so far. They've been popular and you can ask professors about curriculum.

About their research about pretty much anything you wish.

Hi everyone.

So with that, we're going to open the floor for questions, and Lauren Sauder from the admissions office. There's Lauren is going to ask the questions. I will feel them or pass them along to her to and hopefully, Phillip. If you can get back, so please go ahead more on your own.

All right, so thank you all for your questions. We had several come through. First of all, what is the average class size for computer science?

At the beginning there large the computer science one and data structure classes are hundreds of students. But let me explain what that really means. That means you have large lectures.

Two a week, uh 60 to 80 minutes.

And then during the week there's also a 2 hour lab session that two hour lab session is 30 to 30 five students within that lab. There is one graduate teaching assistant and three undergraduate programming mentors there to help you and work with you. So the initial classes are. The lectures are big, the labs are small with structured exercises led by ATA and with three usually very experienced undergraduate programming matters.

As you get into the larger, uh, the later courses, the courses get smaller. Some of them are still over 100, some of them are 50, some of them are 25.

I have to say we've won two of the last four years. We want to Rensselaer Outstanding Trustees. Outstanding Teaching Awards. One was professor Cutler, who is the leader of the Semite Project. In one is Associate Dean Sabella Dolly and we have excellent instructors. Final comment about that. If you find a small intimate program in computer science, turn around and walk the other way. Computer science is a big field, lots of students, lots of opportunities.

We come.

If you find a small program, it means it's not vibrant. I strongly urge you to, not. You know, if you find that.

Go the other way, 'cause all programs are big. If they're not big, they're not vibrant.

Q and I'm just broadening that. How many computer science students are there at RPI?

About 1200

Perfect and we had a few questions coming in about majoring in minoring alongside computer science. Can you just speak about picking up a double major and how easy that is? Just to reiterate, for the folks who.

OK I will. I'm gonna answer part of that. I'm going to turn it over the students.

Um again, there is the dual major and there's the double degree, so I think what we're asking about is a dual major where you get 2 majors for one degree. So here, do you want to talk about your experience?

Short so I have a dual major with psychological science. Both the computer science degree and the psychological science degree have a lot of flexibility to them. You essentially have a round two years of mostly free electives or technical electives in general. In my case, I was able to guess double dip isn't the right word, but I was able to take coursework that was kind of like applying in computer science principles to psychological science or courses.

That were were by psychological science knowledge would be useful in a computing context, so it really I was still able. I actually, I might have a minor in science and technology studies as well. I just haven't turned the form in so it really hasn't been tough for me. I do know people that dual major dyno, specifically one dual major in biomedical engineering and Computer Science who finished of- Kumati which is. I know that is a bit harder to G just because one of the programs.

There's a lot more requirements and the other one, so it's definitely something you can balance. However, whether you want to do appear CS major or you want to do a tool that's at least I see it in the applications we get for you P. The Honor Society. It's pretty much 5050 people that do a dual, or people that choose not too.

Phillip, are you with us?

Give me.

I think you should be able to hear me now.

Phillip

Having technical difficulties OK.

The almost every dual major you can do in 128 credits. Uhm, the easiest one to do is the two easiest ones to do. Not technically easy, but in terms of scheduling our math and it WS.

Are there can you talk Phillip?

You should be able to hear me hopefully.

Go.

OK.

Sorry about that.

Yes, we can hear you. Keep your microphone close. OK, so let's go back and introduce yourself please.

OK, put a microphone close to your mouth please.

No.

Yeah, my computer was having issues with windows drivers or something.

Sorry there was issues with windows drivers on my computer anyways so I'm Phillip Copita. I'm a computer science major at RPI. I also have been doing minors in math and psychology. Currently a junior class of 2021.

I'm in you be either CSR Society. I'm also on the computer science department's undergraduate curriculum committee. I'm also a member of RPI sack, the cybersecurity club, and also in Greek life at RPI. My hometown is in Dallas and fun fact, I've been almost struck by lightning twice in my life, hopefully.

OK, so the question at her it and I have been talking about is is just the dual majors and minors. So do you want to share your experience with your minors in math and psychology please?

Yeah, it's it's really easy.

In terms of labeling and interest.

Yeah um it's pretty easy to to get a minor in in certain things up although of course all the requirements are online you know at least for me.

With with math, all I had to do is take four more higher level math courses, 4000 level math courses, so it's pretty easy to stack on to my computer science major just through free electives and some of the course material in my math minor crossover with my computer science major, which was great. And then for psychology, just through the courses that I picked to fulfill my has core requirements.

I just ended up getting the minor itself, so it's it's pretty easy to, uh, to get miners uhm. And also like Professor Stewart headset if you did want to choose to do a dual major. It also be pretty easy to do that given the flexibility of the computer science curriculum.

OK Lauren next question please, thank you.

Perfect, so this all relates to just the percentage of computer science students getting a job offer before graduation and who helps with job placement.

OK, again, I think will come.

I don't actually have the hard numbers, uhm, but the students get jobs all the time everywhere.

I I actually honestly I don't have hard numbers uhm?

The message student used to find the jobs we have. Akarere Center.

And so companies register through the Career Center and then there are.

Uh, companies come, ask, come directly to the Department, some of whom become affiliated with the Department.

Some of whom I Simply put out. You know whatever we allowed to send one email to all the students, and some students go through online placement.

So it is a wide variety an maybe if her to or and or Phillip wanted chime in on their experience. Please go ahead.

Yes, sure.

Sure, so.

Do you want to start building?

Yeah, but I don't mind, um, in terms of me trying to find jobs or internships in co-ops. Obviously going through the Center for career and professional development was the main way that I did that. They have career counselors in there that help you with not only getting your resume set up to find a job, but they also help you with interviewing and a variety of other things, which has been extremely beneficial for me. There are also like Professor Stewart said on campus events where companies will come.

And give info sessions about their company, what positions they have open. In fact, I know I have friends who have gone to those info sessions and actually had interviews on the spot for positions at those companies, which has been great specifically for internships in co-ops, and then also through the career fair that goes on both in the fall and spring. There are plenty of opportunities on campus.

To apply for a different positions, obviously for me I'm I was currently on Co-op this semester. Unfortunately that got slightly cut short, but because I went to the career fair was able to meet with.

Some of the companies there there actually leads in beginning some job offers. So yeah, there are a lot of opportunities to get help with finding a job and have opportunities to meet with companies on campus.

You're tired, you wanna talk about?

Your experience?

Sure, sure. So um through my involvement with a C&W in upe we do we help underclassmen out to refine their resume early on. In that way they can start having corporate jobs as internships as early as after their freshman or sophomore year.

So that really does help in terms of landing a job before graduating, because.

A lot of people do get return offers from where they did their internship or a lot of people will have an internship and it'll del Plata companies where like they will like to hire people that have different company. So in my case I got an internship offer from interview that I had landed from a meet and greet with a company, something I've learned throughout these years. Companies love RPI, they like to come and they talk to us about their company. We recently had a woman in CS panel.

Women in Tech panel actually with IBM for AC MW around a month and a half ago and then after that there's Bradley be usually collect resumes and they will do on campus interview. So there's actually like space on campus that has cubicles. But instead of people working in those cubicles, there's actually interview scheduled there. And like companies like Microsoft or IBM or Intel will come an interview you on campus. So that's definitely a way that you can go through it.

You can just do general online applications if you like. Throughout my undergraduate career through both student LED an Institute led events, I've had a pretty good idea. You can't avoid having a pretty good understanding of the job application process for whatever you feel is.

Great, thank you Lauren. I'm gonna keep going.

Yeah, we have a bunch of folks asking just about undergraduate research opportunities happening in computer science.

Great, so this is one where the students have to be proactive so you take a course, do well with The Professor.

And you just go knock on the door and.

Just keep trying. There are lots of professors, lots of opportunities, lots of students and just be persistent. I have.

Right now, four students who started his undergrad, five students who started as undergraduates. They took my computer vision class and they were among the top students, and so I made them offers and they either staying for their Masters, are going elsewhere for graduate students. So it's really about just knocking on doors, and I tell the students, and I've told my kids this too when they went for their research. If you knock on 25 doors and you get 20, four knows that means you got one, yes, and you have an opportunity.

So you have to be a little persistent. The other thing I will note is that a lot of computer science related research is outside of computer science majors, so there's a lot of work on data analytics, machine learning.

And amazingly, if you just get to know a professor and that professor wants you to help with their website, you help with their website and all of a sudden they realize you can do other things and you start contributing and you build your skills that way. So lots of opportunities inside the Department, but also lots of interest in hiring you from outside that can turn into real research opportunities.

Go ahead.

Great and we just have a couple of questions regarding the languages that are taught. The computer programming languages at RPI.

Our computer science one starts with Python And that is the primary language there.

Data structures, which is the 2nd Semester Course, is in C and soon after that you learn Java sea.

Those are four primary course languages in um in our programming languages. Course, you learn about four or five more and various programming paradigms.

But pretty much everybody picks up various types of web based programming tools along the way, so some of them are taught formally. Some of them are taught informally and you almost pick up by osmosis when you go into your.

Your job interviews. It is not important in most cases. It is not important that they're not going to jump around the 456 languages. It's important that you know one well.

And you choose in your interview if you. If it's a programming interview, you choose that one language and you stick with it.

Some interviews are a little bit more about project management or product design and those the language might be different.

And happy to have scylla per her to jump in and share their experience on this.

If they want.

Sure, so I definitely learned the four fundamental programming languages that we use in our core curriculum. As Professor Stewart said. For example, for our introduction to algorithms course, I know the labs can really be completed in any language so long as you are showing that you have implemented the algorithm. That said, I feel like it's less of a quantity over quality, like once you go through data structures.

You will be able to pick up pretty much any language well, and once you go through the whole like core curriculum of computer science, you'll be able to pick up any language in an excellent manner.

Just say.

Perfect.

Yeah, um, pretty much what you guys said, Yeah.

OK, next question.

Alright, and I'm just any advice that you have for incoming computer science freshman.

Uh.

I don't know. I have some good ones.

I'm gonna let her ten fill up, answer that question, and then I'll perhaps.

Yeah, I think I think the biggest thing, uhm.

For incoming computer science students, at least for me. So I came into RPI with no programming experience.

And I'm still here. So obviously something went right along the way up.

The biggest thing is that there's an immense amount of help available to you whether it's computer science. One especially and data structures is immense amount of help available to whether it's the office hours from classes where they're going to be T8 undergraduate or they're going to be graduate. TAS and also undergraduate mentors like Professor Stewart mentioned that program that RPI does there always going to be people there to help not only that, like upe. The computer science aren't society that her to naira part up. We offer tutoring services to students and also host tutoring.

Sessions that go for computer science wanted data structures, exams and there are a variety of other groups on campus that provide services to students to give them helping their classes. So don't worry too much about you know. Oh my gosh, I'm going off to college and you know, this is the real deal. Going to be in some big classes they may not necessarily be easy, but there are a lot of tools at your disposal that can really give you a boost so you can do well.

Starting off your freshman year at that, throughout your time at RPI.

I.

Did you want to add to that here too?

Sure, just adding to that it's definitely like I like. I can see from the statistics like most of if not all of you all are just excellent students were ranking at the top of your class in high school, so it's definitely a big change to college. Just having a lot of people with the same drive and energy might be a big change for you also, especially since I was a mentor as it was explained earlier. It was kind of working alongside teaching assistants were grad students for CS1 for three semesters and a big thing I saw with incoming students is.

They were kind of too nervous to admit that they didn't know something and college is kind of a a whole four years of.

Not knowing something that's like the whole point of the growing and the whole growth that happens in colleges, you start realizing all this stuff that you don't know. So don't be afraid to reach out to teaching. Assistants are professors or mentors. I do know like reaching out to professors, maybe scary, you know, I have PHD's like I was definitely like, kind of intimidating at first and it really helped too. I actually went up to professor at he was my CS1 professor and I went up to him and it was kind of like.

It kind of clicked in either was like wow like professors like do care they are humans that are not just like super scary figures with a PhD in their pedestal. So it's kind of a mixture of your professors and tas. Inventors are also people and they're here to help, and it's OK to admit that you don't know something. It's the first step in learning.

Awesome are the only thing I want to add to that is.

Uhm, I loved all those answers and I just want to emphasize.

About half of our students start in CS1 and about half of our students skip CS one and start in data structures and.

It is there's no differential inability, it's really just where are you comfortable starting out. Some students feel they have a lot of background and are well prepared and want to start quickly and jump to data structures. Other students want to just transition to college a little bit more slowly, or they may have less programming background or none.

And they can just start in in CS1 and they're basically starting from the basics. So you really start at your comfort level.

I do remember her to coming to talk to me.

And in that that CS one in I've known her and admired her ability and our leadership ever since.

So I had the other thing I have to say is every year.

I look at the lead the student leaders.

And say how are we ever going to replace them?

And every year.

We miss them terribly.

And a new group of students steps up and leads.

And I hope you guys are all be the that those students and you'll have your turn to step up and lead.

Anyway, next question.

Great so and we just had to follow up to that just how she has one compares to AP computer science that students may take in high school as well as just some of the topics that CS one teaches. And maybe the difference between CS1 and data structures.

OK, I will come.

So CS one starts at the beginning in terms of technical content. It's about the same level as AP Computer Science. The programs might be a little bit more involved, but.

It's a really attempt to be a teach the basics of computation through the the Python programming language. Start at the very beginning with just statements variables.

Wait, uh, assignment statements. Lot basic logic and proceeds eventually toward.

Containers that storm information and classes.

And there the homework assignments are intended to illustrate applications of computer science, ways to think about applying computer science to real world problems.

The focus of data structures is how the containers are built, how information is stored and organized, and the theme of the courses you learn about a container. You'll learn about something like a map or a list or a vector. And again, if you don't know what these words mean, it doesn't matter, but you learn about the concept and then you learn how they're built.

How they're built underneath. So it's the concept, how it's used, and then how it's built. And that's just the revolving theme. As you move through the course again you so.

If you do well on AP computer science.

And you get the five on that exam. You can get credit for CS1 and go right into data structures, but we have had students who said, OK, well, I want to see what they do in Java or in Python. I want to see how they introduce it and they turn down that AP credit and start out in CS1. There are other students who don't bother to take the AP exam but haven't or didn't do well as didn't get that five, but really do have strong programming skills.

And they skip right into data structures.

And if you do skip into data structures without credit, you just have to get take an extra computer science course somewhere along the way.

And honestly, it's very easy to do.

Really, if you just.

Our programming mentor for credit for two semesters. That's it.

You get that so.

Anything I realized Phillip inherited might have different or other answers, but.

Um?

No, OK, next question. Go ahead here.

Just just quickly, mostly, uhm.

I I was meant for CS1 so I'm a bit biased 'cause I think it's like the most wonderful class. However, I there's that three week period. Don't be afraid if you just step in a data structures and you're also taking maybe physics. And that's like a lot and maybe taking Michael. Biology has a lab. It's like a hard to adapt. So definitely, even if you feel comfortable with your programming skills before starting undergrad CS, one is still a great class to take. However, do if you will have, like ample experience. I know some people in UEFI have been coding.

For years and even coding professionally, since they were like able to legally work, so definitely for them BC S1 would have been downloading, I guess at first, just 'cause they've been doing it for so long. However, even for people that are very experienced, it could be useful to have CS1 as a foundation because it is formalized learning. So even if you learn stuff on your own, like if you haven't been in like a college level CS Class, I would still like pretty much recommend going to it. So yeah, it's definitely.

Both are great options to start with and I am a bit biased or CS1 'cause that's where I started.

The one thing I'll add to what her to set her expand on. There's a three week period in the beginning of the semester where you can switch between the two courses.

Anne, it's there's a lot of communication between the instructors of the courses.

And there's a lot of opportunities for students to say, hey, wait a second I wanted. I'd rather be in this other course. I'd rather move more quickly, so jump up to data structures or I'd like to slow down and go back to CS1.

So that we do have that opportunity for the first three weeks of the school year.

Next question.

Great thank you and I'm just in the interest of time. This will be the last general question and then those with more specific questions. We can review the question and answer session that comes next with the one on one meetings. So a couple of questions came in about the mentorship program here to just how you became interested in which the process like to become a mentor.

I'm sure, so I actually I first learned about it because I was confused my first lab. I called everyone TA and I found out three of them were undergrads and they were just absolutely excellent and I remember from a conversation that I had with Professor Stewart He really suggested I become a mentor and I didn't believe him at first, but I still applied. There is an online application form you'd say which classes you take, in which you've gotten your involvement in the Department and why you want to be a mentor. And you also need attention.

Someone in the Department that is work with you either was your TA or your professor.

You both have the same undergraduate research, just kind of someone to be like. Oh yeah, I know this person and this is true. And then I applied first my second semester of undergrad, but I was taking data structures and I was not selected to be a mentor. But honestly, that was a good call. Pretty busy that semester. And then I applied again my third semester. I'm going into my third semester and I've been a mentor for the past six semesters, done for the past three years. There is undergraduate mentors for all sorts of classes, so it started out being a mentor for CS1. I did it for credit the first semester.

And I've been doing it as a paid job since. However, some people choose to do more time for credit, and then I did three sets. One I now for another class, that's database systems.

So it there's a lot of opportunities within the Department, especially if you've taken kind of a more upper level class. I know some people that don't start mentoring that early on, but they'll take an upper division class and they really like it and they professor will ask them to apply as well. If they were pretty good students, and they're very approachable and personable, so my experience it's been like a great marker.

As a mentor, but I also really appreciate all the like as a mentee, as a student in the class is, I do appreciate all the work that the undergrads do, so it's a It's a great. You'll see the great impact of it whether you're a mentor or just as a student.

Just one thing to add is an instructor.

I tell that.

We have a, uh, a tea and a mentor meeting weekly, so we plan the plan.

And they learn early on that it's OK to tell us when we're wrong. Uhm, because they're the ones in the labs nose. Knowing what where the students are struggling where they're not.

But the big one big thing I tell them and other instructors do the same thing, is there part of their job is to dig out the next round of mentors. So these are kids who are both technically skilled as well as a good at communication. 'cause one of the other thing we emphasize in Labs is if you've got it, spend some time helping somebody else.

So we look for those students who both have the technical skills and are willing and interested in helping.

And it's a. It's an amazing program.

So.

Sure.

Great, thank you, so that's going to wrap up the General Q&A, but Chuck if you'd like to review again the one on one meetings and how students can connect.

I have, um, I actually have a message from Megan Um Potter, who is one of our uh.

Professional Advisors, she said. Well, she said that when you sign up.

And are waiting in the queue. Make sure that.

You're in, you're looking at your email as well as looking at the app you wanna talk through.

So if you're interested in talking to a current student, you either go to RPI dot ASE dot web dot app.

Or if you want to go through your smart phone or tablet, just click on this QR code and it'll take you right there.

You will sign up.

You enter your email address in some information about what you're interested. You'll get a message to confirm, and then you'll enter into a queue. I I'm not monitoring the queue.

But I know it's working 'cause I've gotten messages on slack from my team.

So go ahead and join their uhm between now and over the next 2 hours. So you could get some lunch and come back or if you're on the West Coast get some breakfast and come back.

And if you'd rather enjoy the fresh air and sunshine, it's a gorgeous day in upstate New York right now.

You can schedule later one on one meeting.

But it's very important if you have any questions at all, they're ready, eager and willing to answer.

Annetts we find.

We're proud of what we do in these sessions, but we know that these one on one student sessions are super important.

So encourage you to sign up now or sign up for something later if you're interested. Women in computer on science on Monday and I want to stress that most of the women in computer science events are open to everybody.

So the the.

Um, the tech talks the visits from campus. A lot of them they're just open to everybody.

So and then there's the weekly meeting professor events that you can sign up for as well.

Is that what you needed, Lauren?

Yes, absolutely. So we will hang on. Will probably keep this slide up just for another 3 minutes or so. Please write down those pathways in order to connect with those one on one meetings, but otherwise that's what we have for today.

Thank you all for coming and we hope to see you in August and again, congratulations.

And thank you, Phillip in her time.

It's a pleasure.

OK, you guys can sign off. Will wait here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lauren, there's a question there.

Yes, and just. So everyone knows we will have the web and R recordings available for everybody, so keep an eye on your email. We have recorded the full session in case you missed any portion of it, or if your audio cut out or something like that.

Yeah, you can also in the one on one meetings you can ask those questions again.

Yeah, the more specific.

The students have their own take on all of these.

Yeah, there were a lot of some specific questions where the one on one can really benefit students and just thank you all for your questions or just so many great ones. If you think of anything else, feel free to also email us here and admissions. We are happy to correlate with the computer science school as well. You can email your questions if they're not answered through the one on one sessions to admissions@rpi.edu.

Alright, we'll just leave this up another minute, and then I think we will conclude the session.

OK, great.

Just so everyone can write this down, what a wonderful tool.

That's the Rensselaer difference.

There's always someone willing to put it put together something really cool.

Alright, everyone will thank you so much for joining us. Then will now conclude. Have a wonderful day and congratulations again.

Thank you for all and see you soon.

And stay safe.