What is the Difference Between Computer Science and Information Technology and Web Science?

What are camera software?

Hello everyone, hopefully you can hear me there it goes. It turned green. Hello so this slide.

I guess we have a sense of humor in siesta slide shows some interesting information about me. Let me try to fill in some of the blanks so my name is David Goldschmidt. My title is a strange one within the Department. Actually, that's correct at the top. I am the executive officer of the Department and I graduated in 94 with bachelors in Computer Science. 98 Masters in computer Science 05 pH D. And you guessed it, computer science. Although RPI, so I've been around RPI and maybe not quite.

400 years, but that's a good guess. I started here is not in grad and whenever that was 1990, the role that I have is essentially teaching faculty. So I am a I don't do any research, so that ended in 05 when I completed my PhD pretty much.

And so I've been focused since that time. You know, I'm really teaching. And so I started full time in this role as Executive Officer in 2012.

And during that, yeah almost 10 year period then really just teaching our core courses and also some interesting sort of software development software engineering courses. And the fun fact about me is true. I must admit. So I do have a handful of shirts and so on from all the stuff we would hand out when we are in person, which will hopefully get back to in the fall. So that's a good fun fact about me that works.

Hi I'm wondering Mark like I have the program manager for Information technology and web science.

Basically, what that means is I advise all of the undergraduate students in the program, along with Professor Flacca and do a few other things to keep the program running.

Uh, if you think David Goldsmith, when RPI, along time I've been at RPI longer than him.

Over 40 years I've worked in many, many different jobs. I have been in this job for the past 20 years, which is by far my favorite job and I will continue it until I retire, which will be soon now OK.

The fun fact, oh.

5 Plus the fun factor is my husband and I just got 6.

Baby checks they're so cute for yellow and three Brown and there we have six grandchildren so we get we basically told me to them they could have won and they named him all. I won't go through all the names. They're quite wild an.

Yeah, we we don't raise them to eat them. We raise them for the answer, hopefully will happen for.

Yes to come.

Hi everyone, my name is Megan Potter. I'm a senior student services administrator in the Department of Computer Science and the broader School of Science. I like to say that my title is essentially a fancy title for academic advisor, so I work with our computer science majors and actually I can also talk with any student in any major within the School of Science about their degree requirements, making sure there.

You know making adequate progression to graduation, helping them get involved in the Department, that sort of thing. And I also get to help organize events like this for meeting and recruiting accepted students, which is one of my favorite parts of my job.

I'm a newbie compared to my colleagues today. I've been at RPI for about 3 1/2 years and really enjoy working with the students and faculty and staff, so I plan to stay for awhile and my fun fact is that I have an 8 month old puppy named Ruthie. She's a little cavalier King Charles Spaniel and so if you hear her yapping in the background of our webinar today, I apologize.

Alright, so thank you. So nice to metabolic David. You wanna take this or?

Yeah, I guess that's my cue.

So definitely yeah, very briefly. Computer science we I guess I should talk about the Department in general for a moment as well we.

A few years ago became the largest major on campus in terms of you know enrollment, number of numbers of students, number of undergraduate students, which is a great, you know? Yeah, we're number one, but at the same time obviously a lot of work that we all need to do to scale up.

Across all the introductory and advanced courses.

So within CS as sort of the slide describes here at a very high level right, our focus is on software algorithms.

And really, to some degree you know implementing those so there tend to be sort of two aspects to the courses that we have in CS. There's sort of the very generally theory side, so sort of underlying all of computer science. You know the computer science theory working with algorithms in particular, you know if you think of just very briefly algorithms you have, you know, five different algorithms to solve. Maybe the same problem. You want a good way to analyze those algorithms to determine which one is the most efficient.

In terms of time, maybe also in terms of space, we look at trade offs there etc etc. So there's sort of the theory side and then there's more the the what we call the system side right that we're really sort of implementing those algorithms. Certainly writing code larger scale software architecture and design, putting the pieces together, and then how do we test all that and so on, right? So that's an awfully broad sort of description, but.

Being that computer science sort of you know reaches so many different disciplines as Dazai TWS is, you'll hear in a moment as well. You know it. It can be difficult to sort of define what CS really is, but essentially that's how we look at it, right theory and then sort of systems.

Uh, and then there's reading this slide here it so the end is a good way to describe it as well. Or to summarize it right, we're using computer technologies, whatever those are. Again, maybe the theory that's coming out of algorithm development to solve some usually rather specific problems in and across other disciplines. Whoops, where are we now? Yes.

I'm reading from your slide already, so I think we need to go back there.

Yeah, sorry, I'm reading from your slide or your part of the slide there as well. Rick. Sorry bout that.

No no.

Yeah no, no no. It's all where is similar, is how closely we work together. It's a perfect illustration, so taking those concepts from computer science and as was just described and applying them to common everyday problems in business, an in science and technology, various reasons or things that we do with information technology at RPI. Information technology, web science at RPI.

Is really understanding the interplay between how everything works with the web, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and how it works with the different information technologies and from Internet of Things. Whether it's online devices, whether it's.

Figuring out a way to get applied technology to a business problem. All of these things. Doing data analytics. A lot of the work that computer science did, an IT did with our data analysts was covid related. We did a lot of Covid work over the last a few months. You may have heard we had a pandemic and so we were all working on that to calculate models for how to handle and curb the spread of infection and things like that. And these are things that we've all worked very closely together.

To workout to deal with.

I'm using the power computing to attack social technical problems in a field in the field of your choice. I TWS allows you to apply not just computer science technologies to these types of problems, but we also have students in biomedical engineering, other engineering disciplines, other science disciplines, and business and management as well.

Next, slide yes. So the curriculum we combined technical courses in computer and courses in human computer interaction again, the social implications. Ethics is a big part of our program. How you're going to work with the data that you see, how you're going to deal with different situations. Using this technology, you know the fact that you can grab all this Internet of Things data and what you do with it and understanding the ramifications of that. All the Cambridge Analytica situation with Facebook and all of that. These are things that we bring up into the forefront and have discussions and.

Try to deal with as well and prepare you for.

You'll graduate with a foundation ITWeb science with an area of expertise. So you've got concentrations which are eight courses in a selected field. We have various web technologies. Data security.

Human computer interaction mediadesign

and various different concentrations, and you also have the ability to customize concentration. So if you want a data analytics and a an entrepreneurship concentration, we can help work those out with you. It's one of the things that's very special about our program because the multidisciplinary nature of our program allows you to cross different areas in school and create a concentration that fits your goals.

We have both professional research track offered in the Bachelors and for the research track you have a captain capstones replaced with a 2 semester thesis course and that's for people looking to go on and complete Masters or maybe go into a multidisciplinary pH D.

Next slide, let's see graduates. So last year again we had was a very interesting year, but 80% eighty 7% of our seniors reported in employment right out of school. We've had 100 place 100% placement for the seven years prior to that. Our highest reported salary last year was 110,000. Our average starting salary in 28 in 2019 was 96,000. Last year was 84 five, and so you see a trend where we've got quite good salaries and the companies that.

Folks go to. We've got lots of folks at Microsoft, Google, IBM, Becton, Dickinson, Johnson, and Johnson, Boeing, various government, associated three letter abbreviated companies, one of which you see there, Apple.

Deloitte, and so there's quite a plethora of really good jobs and a big demand for our students.

And then I think that's back to you.

Alright, yes.

Yeah, so is CSI know I spilled some of the shared some of the details already. So to dig in more deeply right?

Our Department consists of 19 full-time faculty, a subset of those are full-time lecturers like myself. So again, I mentioned already. I don't do any research. My focus is really on, you know, classroom and.

As well as advising, certainly our curriculum, we aim to have our curriculum really be, you know, a good combination of both. You know, rigor, an core courses that you need to take to really get you know the fundamentals, as well as sort of the advanced fundamentals. If that's a term that makes any sense you know down would also be very flexible and we have had flexibility, maybe all along in our major. I think we've probably become a little more flexible given.

Again, the scale of the number of students that we have, but as as it says at the very bottom, you know we we really encourage our students to be dual majors with other fields with other disciplines. And of course, I TWS one of the one of the most common most frequently occurring dual major that we have that makes a lot of sense. Tying the two together.

Based both on the overlap as well as what doesn't overlap.

And also on top of that, you know encouraging students to get minors in other disciplines as well. So let me jump to clicking on stuff next slide. Thank you. The are our core curriculum and you can find it very easily. Just you know, Googling around RPI computer science.

And we have six courses across the first two years.

So it's either 4, maybe three semesters depending.

And those courses we start with CS1 and then move on to data structures. Those are are sort of first year courses. CS One is a course that covers but it assumes that you haven't programmed before. So one thing to be clear on is, you know, as you come to RPI.

Who cares if your program before? Chances are you might have, but if you haven't CS one, you know that's where that's a good starting point.

And CS one in Python.

Covers not only sort of the Python, you know, specifics of that language, but also computer science. You know in general, right?

The second semester for most of our students will be data structures and data structures switches into C, which is much more, maybe cryptic or has a lot more detail in terms of syntax versus Python.

So the learning curve there is probably a bit steeper.

Some of our students will, in their first semester, you know, Skip CS one or have credit for it with a P. So for the Java AP exam, getting a 5 on that exam, or in some cases you know even have a course transferred in, so those details getting into too many details, maybe, but sort of work those out as you as you start your first semester, so CS one or data structures will be your starting point in your first year and then from there Fox is our foundations of computer science course.

Which is essentially a discrete mathematics course.

Name implies foundations and from there as well in that same semester you have Fox and comp work comp. Org is the course where we started digging into our hardware or guess is close to the hardware as we get in CS. So we get into assembly level programming, C programming and then the other two courses there. The last two would be interested algorithms and principles of software. So we really briefly there entered algorithms. That's where you're really looking at algorithms in some actually.

Well, introduction but really in some some low level details different algorithmic paradigms. Their principles uses Java as its language that you work in in that course, but by then you sort of either have learn Java along the way, or maybe you do it from a P or whatever. So one of the side effects of going through these courses essentially is that you can pick up languages very quickly. Really after your first year. Even so, principles focuses on Java, sort of the larger scale.

Object oriented design aspects that Java does fairly well with. Also on build systems. Version control program proving some other guest name implies principles of developing software and then beyond that there's two more courses you take at the upper level operating systems and programming languages.

And then four more courses of your choosing at the upper level might the CS option courses is what we call those.

And those courses, maybe I'll try to.

Describe you know the types of courses. Or you can dig around and find lists of courses that we have easily in the catalog, for example but.

Uhm?

But anyways, so for those courses we also have you take a capstone which is defined as being three courses within a certain area, so there might be 3 courses related to artificial intelligence, three courses related to sort of you know systems and software like software development, software documentation.

I'm so bunch of courses there. Other concentration areas are theory and algorithms mathematics, so the more theory side which students will head down that path, more so to head towards, you know, maybe graduate work.

And then the 4th one is sort of our miscellaneous sort of whatever else we you know our faculty are doing. Research in teaching courses about that don't necessarily fit in the other categories. Actually, there's there's a lot of sort of courses that fall into multiple categories there, but But anyway, we try to have some meaningful organization to all of our upper level courses, and once again is sort of up to you. You know what courses One Direction you want to take your CS degree real briefly, so math courses?

Should be 4 math courses so calc one calc two and then two additional courses that we have some recommendations what sort of our good prereqs to other. You know CS courses? What would help?

Science you have your three science courses and some of these requirements are coming out of the surrounding school of Science. So physics, one biology and then one other science course of your choosing.

And then everyone on campus essentially is taking six courses in the humanities, arts, and social Sciences. And then, as you can see at the bottom there, right? The rest are free electives, so the free electives give you that flexibility to become a dual major, and you know, fill those free electives with required courses from the other discipline that you're interested in.

So I mentioned already with the largest major. I don't know if I mentioned, but that we're we're above 1300 undergraduate students, which again is very cool. Very nice to be #1 sort of tells me we're doing something right, but at the same time, yeah, a lot of sort of work to be done advising students and staying ahead in terms of courses and and so on. Anyways, one of the maybe also positive side effects of having so many.

You know students and so many sort of enthusiastic students in the major is we have a number of clubs and organizations, one of them which is technically a Research Center, but we don't really do research in this Research Center, or that's where it started anyways. Is the Rensselaer Center for Open Source, and that's really sort of.

You know, taking ideas and just developing projects in a semester and these projects would be open source projects, meaning the code is freely available within probably GitHub.

And.

The other thing I always describe about Arcos, well, I guess I described a lot of different things about our code. One is it's it's really the one place. Even work on a project. Have the project fail right? You don't actually have anything. In the end, it works and still get an egg, right? So you're going through the process of just working through an idea, working on a team, trying to make a project work, or trying new ideas so you know it. It's less driven by the end goal of something that's actually working and more driven by the process and just.

Innovation, and so we have a lot of cool projects that will fall out of a semester of arkose.

The other thing I always say about our coast is forgetting it already. Now that doesn't make any sense. Alright, so one thing you know, as you get to sort of, you know, through your four years here, looking to intern internships and then certainly you know probably employment afterwards or grad schools. You know a lot of interviews will ask you know, OK, great RPI. Your GPA looks good. You've taken all these courses. Tell me about a project you've really worked out, so that's you know. That's one thing that our coast really does is give you that project experience.

Uhm?

The other organizations that clubs are in our coast is very student driven, but all these clubs are student driven, so ACM W. The women's chapter of ACM RPI Security Club hack RPI. They organize an annual hackathon on campus this year, obviously not on campus but online, but where you know hundreds of other students will come from other schools to attend this this weekend hackathon.

Uh CS Club coding and community, which is a more more recent addition to our sort of list of clubs where students will go out into the surrounding community and teach K through 12 are really large. K through 6.

Students you know how to code so that really for under represented communities in particular, and then UPE. Last but not least, there is our Honor Society and really, that cover is not CS specifically, it's CSI TWS. I think you know surrounding other sort of technical majors will also join, but really see SNITWSRR Honor Society and so through that you know partly a lot of these are this. One in particular is kind of another cool thing to put on your resume.

But also, there's you know meetings that you would attend and different positions you would hold, and you pee in particular among other of these organizations, provide tutoring for courses, cram sessions as you're studying for the data structures or CS1 exam the next day. So stuff like that. There's a lot of lot of good energy and good fun there as well.

And then last but not least there. Yeah, pure programming mentors are assigned to most of the CS courses that we have, or certainly the introductory courses that we have the required courses where you know you're in a CS1 lab or you're in an algorithms lab working on you know whatever the assignment is for that week.

And you have, you know, students have already taken the course. You know, mentoring and helping you.

Alright, what do we got next?

Cool student panelists.

So.

After this next part of our session, we're going to transition into having a few representatives from the TWS Department in computer science Department hop in and introduce themselves, and basically be available to answer any questions that you might have about their experience in either major. We have a few who are dual majors, so they can talk about the overlap there.

So yeah, this is just an interactive part of the presentation, so if you have questions, you can put them into the chat feature on Slate so we have our panelists hop back in now and will go through and have you each introduce yourselves.

Hi, can anyone everyone hear me OK awesome. Hi so my name is Molly and I'm currently a senior and incoming graduate student. My two majors are computer science and TWS so I'm actually a local student. So in my hometown is in Latham NY which is not too far from Troy actually.

And some activities I'm involved in. So for academic clubs I am a part of the RPI Society of Women Engineers. The Rensselaer Center for Open source like Professor Goldschmidt just mentioned. I'm also a mentor for the Woman's Mentor Program, an ACM W.

For cultural clubs, I served as the event planner for the Chinese American Students Association.

And for hobbies, I'm part of a dance crew named RPI. A slender and fun fact about myself. I have been more motivated to stay fit during the pandemic and similar to Linda. My family used to own chickens when the weather was nice today, so thank you.

Hi, I'm Johnson. I am a sophomore and I am a computer science and I TWS dual major.

I come from Webster, NY, which is around like 4 hours away from RPI.

For activities I'm the Director of technology for RPI and I'm part of DDR club.

And along with that I'm involved in Arkose and UPE.

And a fun fact about me is I really, really, really like sushi. And yeah.

OK so I am Chris Pence. I'm currently a senior so graduating this May.

Similar to the two people that came before me, Molly and Jensen, I am and I TWS and CS dual major. My hometown is in Ardsley, New York, which is just North of New York City and Westchester County.

For activities, I am the president of Gamma New ETA, which is the TWS Honor Society. So it's it's similar to UPE, but just on the TWS side of things.

And then I'm also secretary of the smart Lighting Sustainability Club, which is a smaller club on campus.

Fun fact, I like to collect playing cards.

Hi, my name is Charlotte Stanton. I'm a sophomore. I I have a double major in TWS and communications media and design. I'm from Wyckoff NJ which is Bergen County, North Jersey. I'm the vice president of TWS student leadership amember of Gammon Ueda and I am currently still interning although as Chris knows I have been trying to quit for literally months.

Uhm, and my fun fact is that I was born in Vimar, Germany and I speak German fluently.

OK, so we have some questions. I'm not sure if Rick and David want to come back on so and then whoever wants to take the question can take it. I'll start asking some of the questions from the from the chat.

Is there a difference between the main forms of mathematics?

We've been working with and CS versus my TWS.

Press I see you shaking your head you wanna take it.

I can start, I think the well, if I'm not mistaken, the requirement for ITWS is a little bit less. You have to take fewer of those courses, but the CS requirement right? You need to take calc one, calc two as professionals. Government mentioned an. Then you can do two elective options after that. So I personally went for multivariable calculus and then linear algebra. After that, neither of which I've used in the WS curriculum. But I have.

Used in the CS curriculum stuff.

It depends if you dual or not, what the requirements.

Come and kind of jumping off of that since I TWS only has requirement of two math math classes, I think it's too and I came into college with calc, ABN, calc, BC and AP Stats so I don't actually have to take any math again ever, so that's kind of nice. But if you do let's see us, you do have to.

Yeah, same with Charlotte. I had some credits for calculus BC but I took multivariable calculus and then introduction to differential equations so a little bit different. But they met my math requirements.

Yeah, and I'm the same as Molly. I took in brought in Calc one and calc two and I just took differential equations, an multivariable calculus.

Thank you all.

Either one of the professors have anything to add.

We need to make Charlotte take more math.

I only know it.

OK.

I think it sums it up well.

I'll give you one step class and that's it.

OK, the next question is what operating systems do you primarily teach programming language in?

I can try to jump in on that one, So what?

What operating systems do you primarily teach programming languages in so?

I think you mean generally so for CS1 data structures all the various courses that we have. We also have a programming languages course, most of them you're going to be in some Linux environment.

I know I always teach opsys or not always. Most of the time I'll teach operating systems and so we use in a bun to you know very specific. A buntu version, whatever you know, operating system, we have a.

Something called submit E, which is an auto grading system, among other things, sort of an LMS that you can submit your code to and it automatically runs it against test cases and shows you, you know, sort of a score for each of the test cases. So a lot of our courses will use that.

Uh, and so that uses a bunch too. So that means you probably want to use the same version you know, especially in a course like operating systems in CS1 and data structures starting out, you know with those courses it's less important to be on a very specific OS like that, and so generally I would say you know whatever. If you have Windows, if you have a Mac, if you have, you know whatever it is that's going to be fine. We tend to use like VirtualBox or something where we can, you know.

Within Windows you know run and a bunch to instance. For example, right, so I don't know if any of the student panelists have.

Experience is there or it can give more more details. Go for it.

I mean, I think that's pretty spot on it. The only thing I'd add is it, like if you're asking about if you need like a specific OS to actually take any of the classes you you definitely don't. I've I've done all of the classes on Windows just using Linux virtual machines, so.

I never ran into any issues personally, but.

I know students who take classes with Max and things like that as well, so.

Yeah, similar to Chris on. I've used mostly you buntu for both my computer science, an eye TWS courses and yeah I never had any difficulty with that.

OK, the next question.

Do you offer any next generation programming?

Example infrastructure as code in CS.

Or is this offered in the TWS program?

So I can say that we offer we don't offer courses specifically in those areas, but we do bring them into the curricula and into the group projects in various IT courses, so will handle things like DevOps Docker instances. Things like that will handle serverless architecture in our discussions in our in our labs and discussions, and things like that, but there are no courses specifically to that because it's such a wide topic.

OK.

Do you receive grades as part of being in clubs or organizations?

I can jump in on that, and I know Chris is also notice there's a question before that too, but the.

Sorry.

For our coast, you do. Sorry if I didn't mean to confuse matters there for our coast. You do take it as a as a course so it's very much sort of independent study project. You know team project based. So our coast he would typically take for credits and get a grade, but all the other clubs and organizations that were on that slide you do, you know, not for a grade, not for credits, right? You're just getting involved. All this sort of, you know many communities. I guess you might think of it that way. You know groups to get involved with.

And then, uh.

I was going to go to that other question real quick 'cause I know it's an AP CS question, so I'll mention real quick. The previous question you know, the AP Computer Science Exam and I'm going to forget the exact names, but the one that is the Java one. You had a 5 on that you get credit for CS1.

The other one I think it's the principles or something like that. More general I.

And I, I believe you can get just sort of general free elective credit for that with a 5, so yeah that.

And somewhere on the admissions site, and probably also on the registrar site, you can Google around and track that down, but definitely we're looking forward to get CS one credit. You know the the 80 of score of a 5 on the Java AP AP exam, and just again, just a quick note there, some schools don't even offer a PCs, so we don't want you to feel like, oh now I'm stuck. Starting with CS1, you can decide to skip CS1 if you've been programming for you know, two years, something like that.

Some.

This is a general school question, but do any of y'all play sports and if so, how is it balancing school and practice?

For us

I don't play sports, but I did have a roommate that was on the dance team and I've noticed that she found it pretty easy to balance. You know she would organize all her schedule on Google Calendar and she would always have time for homework. Or was it? Would it be?

We do have a lot of students that are involved in sports in both of our programs I believe.

And you just had time management is K. That's the that's the thing when you have when you're playing us for an.

Taking you know, courses in either tsri TWS or both. You have to learn how to manage your time well. So that is one of the biggest.

Things that students have to learn when they come to RPI.

OK, next question. Are there any differences in jobs for students who graduate as a CS major versus an eye TWS major?

I would say.

I would say it depends. Basically depending on your concentration in your areas of focus, you could easily start in a similar job like software engineering or what have you, but if you go towards more of the human computer interaction side or some of the web technology side data analytics could fit to both. Machine learning might be more in my computer science side, but a data analyst might be more in the TWS side. The we have a lot of students come out of the TWS program, become product managers.

At Microsoft and Google and Apple and things like that tending to balance the concerns of the business as well as the technologist at the same time, that's kind of what the TWS does. Is it bridges that gap, and then I'll let Professor Goldschmidt talk a little bit more, but a little bit more than technical track probably would be more of the CS side.

Yeah, trying to throw what else can I throw in there?

I guess we didn't have a slide. That sort of describes you know students and where they get hired and so on.

Maybe the simplest way to answer is kind of you know, every semester fall spring at tored, the beginning of of each semester. We have a career fair.

Style is encouraged even first year. First semester students to go to just to get immersed in it.

I love the in person ones more so than the on line on line ones. We've been doing early 'cause I wander around and pick up all the cool T shirts and swag as well as mentioned earlier.

But but not really. You know, companies that are at the career fairs, I mean 90 plus percent are looking for CS or looking for ITWeb science, right? I mean because we were so over, not overlapping because we we intersect with so many other disciplines. You know, you have a lot of various opportunities there. I think Rick covered. So yeah, the specifics will maybe be different in, you know, depending on your focus area in which major but.

But yeah, and by the way, the AP question. Thank you to Ulysses. You can see in the chat that copy and pasted details in there.

OK, how did each of the student panelists decide on their major in their area of concentration?

We'll start with cross.

All I could do the farthest left on my screen. Now I can keep track.

OK yeah, so I decided originally on computer science because back in high school I took a few programming classes over the summer and I really enjoyed it. I got to like learn job over the summer which was really cool and I I enjoyed it. And then I started taking some of the courses in high school and that got me interested in computer science. So I knew coming into RPI I had applied.

As a computer science student and then an accepted students day, I met with a few students, like right at the end of the day and they told me about the abuse program.

And that really piqued my interest. So once I got RPI added, I TWS as a dual major. The first, the first semester I was here, I think. And then from there in terms of picking concentrations, I've kind of enjoyed everything that I've done so far. So I picked kind of the concentration that would get me the most exposure to everything. So I'm currently in a web technologies concentration.

How much is giving me? Like I said, pretty good exposure to a lot of different courses.

Charlotte

Alright, so I guess I'll start this off by saying well, so I came in as an I TWS major and then just I guess a couple of weeks ago I added my communications tool.

And I had taken communications classes already. I just officially added it a few weeks ago, but I guess I'm pretty big difference between Chris and I is that I don't really like programming.

I can't really say that that's why I went into technology. The reason that I went into technology is because I'm interested in the way that it impacts society in the way that you know. Data and information are going to wind up impacting society, especially like as it pertains to culture, and so some jobs that I'm looking into for art or like working in consumer analytics for luxury brands and stuff like that. So for me it was pretty natural to pick information technology.

Web science over computer science because it kind of played into. I guess the business and societal aspects of what I'm interested in over just the technological aspect.

And then naturally I had the communications major because I don't know that just kind of went hand in hand with what I'm trying to accomplish.

And then my concentration is going to be a special interest concentration that combines data science and cognitive science. So yeah, that's how I got here.

Molly.

Yeah, so for me I actually came into RPI as a chemical engineer and I chose computer science in TWS. After speaking with Linda and Megan who helped me a lot during the transition, but I chose these two majors because think firstly the career prospects I thought was very good for students in our major the other.

Thing that attracted me, I think, for I TWS, it was how we had the chance to work on a lot of group projects. And I thought that was very fun about that major and for computer science I felt that all the courses offered me a very good foundation. So those were kind of the two reasons why I chose those majors and my concentration is in web technologies.

Hipex

Jensen

Yep, so for me I came into RPI as a computer science major, mostly because I did a robotics club in high school and I found that I was really interested in programming.

And during my first semester, I talked with a few friends about it, TWS and so I became interested in it. And I signed up for it.

And for my concentration I did web tech technologies because I'm interested in web development.

Yeah.

The one thing to note is that.

Once the students that said they do did work technologies, we have a dual template on our website and.

The template is with the web technologies concentration Professor Goldschmidt and I work on it every year to make sure we have all the courses covered for both of the degrees.

And web technologies was the concentration that fit most nicely. Now, having said that, you don't have to do web technologies. We have many students who do I TWS with a computer science dual with a different concentration? But it was just if you happen to be looking at the website and see the jewel, you'll notice that it's in web technologies because.

It it.

It enables you to do 4 four credit classes with 12 4x4 for all of the semesters, and there's no semesters where you have to take extra classes, so to speak.

What programming languages would be recommended to learn ahead of entering either program?

I I'll jump in first. I would say that technically speaking, you don't need to learn any because we plan we will more than are more than prepared to bring you into programming from the beginning. However, depending on where you're going to enter an what you're going to do, if you are interested in things like HTML and CSS and Web programming, that could help you on the information technology side. If you learn some beginning programming languages C.

Plus might help you with data structures and what have you, but I'll let Professor Goldschmidt talk to those languages.

Yeah well, certainly I like the beginning of that answer. I mean you don't need any programming language like programming languages walking in the door.

Ann and I always emphasize that are you know, initial summer orientation sessions when everyone shows up and so on that don't look to your friends and see that they're in data structures and feel like, Oh no, I'm in CS1, I'm behind. You can just laugh at your friends and data structures 'cause they'll be staying up all night doing their data structures homework.

But anyways, so yeah. But but with that said I mean sure Python is a very approachable language, which is why we adopted it for CS1A handful of years ago.

When you do get to data structures, whenever that is, but it's your first or second semester, you know, spend a couple weeks beforehand. I would say just looking at the syntax of C++, so data structures definitely hits the ground running.

So if you have the syntax down initially, you know a few weeks before data structures begins for you. That's probably going to be helpful, because usually I hear and I'm going to look to the student panelists to see if they've had these experiences at all or can relate. You know, that all the data structure stuff, I get it. I see it in lecture. I see the code and it makes sense, but when I sit down to do it, I'm getting. I'm stumbling over things because of this syntax, 'cause there's a lot of curly brackets and all sorts of.

You know symbols and so on, so anyway, so that that comes to mind but. But yeah, once again I mean you know for anyone who's doing AP Java is coming in so so once again if it's 0 languages that you have or or any of those three, or any other languages.

That's all good, you know there's there's no sort of uniform answer to that, I guess, really.

Any other students have anything to add?

I can I can back both of those up, I'd say.

Yeah, the data structures definitely you are you start, you start running right away, so having if you've taken AP CSA and you did well on that exam and you go right into data structures, it's just a matter of kind of learning. The differences between the Java and the C syntax, which which isn't, which is what I did. I came in with.

Right into data structures, so I personally didn't make the jump from Python to C++, which could be a little bit more difficult, and I'm not sure if anyone else here did. It would be recommended, but you'd already be here and you kind of have to know that party, so you've got time before that one.

Yeah, so I took CS one which was in Python And then data structures which was CS plus plus and in between I didn't really plan ahead and you know did some research on my own, but of course you know that's not to stop you to not learn a little bit or study on your own time before those classes, so we'll have a little bit of an idea of what the language is like, but by all means, yeah.

The course and our professors are definitely very good about, you know if you're brand new to this language, you can definitely take your time and learn throughout the course.

Also there is. I'm like 90% sure of this. If someone could back me up, but it's not just like a false memory. I'm pretty sure there is a data structures like summer packet equivalent where like they give you questions about the syntax. So like you are supposed to do it before the class starts. I distinctly remember that being on submit EI don't know if anybody else remembers that, but yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can back that up. I came in without any C experience, only with Java and they had a like mini summer course and submitted that help. The transition from any other programming language in two C and that really helped a lot. So yeah.

Do you want to tell them what some it is?

Yeah, sure I can talk about it. Samity is like a.

It started off as like a homework submission auto grader and now it's sort of become more into like a full blown course management system.

And I'm a developer on Semite and it can do a bunch of it. Has a bunch of different features that make it like on par with say something like Blackboard, or if you've used like Google Classroom and stuff like that.

And.

In it, students were interested in that before they started. How would they get access to it?

Uhm?

To get access to the you're talking about the summer courses, right? The like support course.

Yeah.

I believe that when you sign up for data structures at a certain point before the class starts, they'll send you a link with information about it.

OK.

So yeah.

OK, great.

Yeah, that's the that's the aim we we try to try to do that I guess over the summer if you're jumping into data structures right away.

Uhm?

We try to get sort of OK here. You know you're added to this submit course.

It's really it is. It's not a course that you get any credits for us, just sort of the mini course or module that you would do within submitted within that environment.

And then, if you're going from CS, one who data structures you know fall to his spring semester at the end of CS1. Somewhere in that mix it sort of like. OK, here you go. Here's how to prepare for data structures, so you sort of get it then as well.

Yeah, so depending on when you start.

Absolutely.

OK, the next question, if we are deciding between the two majors, which is a better default? One? That depends on who you ask.

I got well and I'll say, but I'll say it with it. Depends on your focus in your desire. So with their students here, we've got a mix where you've got two that are primary ITWS&CS and two that are primary CS, and I TWS. One example would be that we had a student graduate, we had two students graduate right next to each other. With this I TWS and computer science who is a product manager for Microsoft Edge and another student that was CS and computer and it WS.

And they are a lead programmer on the team for Edge for Microsoft, so doing a little bit more technical work, they're on that team that is being run by the woman that left an is it WS primary? So it depends on your focus and your desire, which angle you'll go. You heard Charlotte talk about? She's more concerned about.

Social implications and how technology is applied that's not going to put her into a systems engineering job. It's going to be in more of a job. That's going to see how the technology that a company is being developed is going to be applied in the world, and that's a role that she would play and that that's something that I TWS kind of leads torwards as opposed to computer science which we will start in the more technical discipline getting into actually developing the logic. One of our students, computer science TWS dual.

Developed the current machine learning platform for Apple and runs it now for Apple and their computers. They were computer science primary, so it depends on what your focus and desires are.

To add a bit.

Anybody else to add?

Yeah, to add a bit to that, I believe if you take computer science as a secondary major there are a bit more requirements. I think you need less certain grade for a.

Data structures.

Tab menu.

Yeah there.

Yeah, no, I can jump in and help describe that. So if you start as you know I WS or any other major like Molly started in chemical engineering, it was right so.

To add CSS as a major.

And you know this was based partly on wow. We're seeing so many students. How do we manage this and make sure that you know?

That they're going to do well in our curriculum. So CS is, you know.

Like IT very much like a hot topic, let's all go do that, right? So you need to get a B in data structures.

Before we add you to the major or if you don't get a beat, you get below AB. We take the like CS1 data structures. The next course foundations and calculate GPA there, and if it's a 30 or higher, essentially AB average or higher then will add you to the major there as well so.

So you know that and we're one of the very few majors, maybe the only one. I'm not sure that has that sort of entry requirement, or adding the dual major requirement.

One of them may be negative side effects of that is that when you come in the door, you know if you don't choose CS, you need to go through data structures before you can choose CS, right?

But I think that's an important step just to make sure that. OK, yes, all this very technical.

Cryptic to some people, very ugly and I don't want to do that kind of stuff. You know that you are interested in that and can do well with that. Or well enough, you know. Be in data structures so.

Hopefully that doesn't, though discourage you know, I'm going to say yes then and then add you know, another dual major, right? I mean that's fine.

The other thing I was going to add to this as well was that you know if you look at the different curriculum templates. The first semester, the first two semesters there's a lot of very similar. You know, courses that you will take, you know CS one for most majors, calc one, calc, two that's, you know there's a lot of sort of initial sets or or courses that you will take regardless of or almost regardless of major.

So.

I think the only course that you take differently if you start as a night major in the first year is we have a course which Professor Placa actually teaches called Introduction to information technology and web science, and that's offered in either the first or second semester. Most incoming students take it in the first semester. It certainly does not mean if you come in as computer science.

That you can't do.

I'm.

Information technology, but it's there's course sequences that you go through with TWS.

Yeah, so one other. I know one other sort of administrative detail. I'm pretty sure you need to choose only one major coming in.

But if you know coming in the door you want already dual in CS and I T for example, you know, then you can plan your schedule accordingly, right? You can plan for that from even your first semester.

So hopefully that's helpful as well, right? The whole sort of summer orientation, you know. Part of of figuring out what courses you're going to take in your first semester. You know the various advisors all of us can help sort of figure that out.

OK, we have time for one more question and that's just what we have here. What is the difference in the kinds of research opportunities in CS versus I TWS?

Well, I can talk to some. Some of my research. Again. It follows the similar lines of similar theme of what we've been talking about. So for example, some of my research is in blockchain and smart contracts, but also in the application of those two ethics, ethics and technology. How technology is being applied in ethical ways, but then also talking about Black blockchain, DevOps related opportunities and things like that and how they can be scaled. So how can we deploy blockchain and smart contracts may be for real estate, for specific implementations of it.

And then do it in a scalable way.

From the CS side and really in general, I think.

Any question is yeah, what's the difference in the kinds of research opportunities really? Here's my sort of, you know, brief answer to anyone looking to do research as an undergrad. I mean for CS.

So you use, you'll see sort of things emailed out periodically to our email. You know CS undergrad email list with like hey, you know this this faculty member, this instructor, this professors you know looking for people to join a research group? You know, maybe this summer or to work on this project. So that's one way to sort of catch those opportunities another I tend to recommend is to look through on various website you are full of science.

Or rather, computer science list of faculty and see what their research areas are.

And she, oh wow, I'm very interested in this as well. Let me maybe try to reach out to this faculty member that.

And she you know, if there's some research opportunities down the road.

The other I don't talking more about how to get one as opposed to what they are. But the other thing I'd I'd tend to recommend is you know it. Usually I think springboards off of a course that you take.

Right, so you come and you take, you know, a very interesting course. Maybe add an upper level more often than at an intro level like wow. This is really cool stuff. Let me talk with the instructor about going forward and doing some research you know next semester, so that's another way that you can sort of create that.

Relationship there.

Some of that's helpful, but that agendas would describe, you know, the types of research. Look through what all the various research areas are amongst, you know on the various faculty listings and web pages.

And also the research centers the research groups as well.

OK, perfect timing David. It's now 6:00 o'clock.

That's helpful.

I would personally like to thank all of all of you for coming and and.

Participating in our.

Web and R. I'd really like to thank the students for coming and being part of this. You're always very helpful.

Absolutely.

And I will turn it over to David Anrich for some last words.

We just want to thank you all very much for coming. Thank the students for their time and their candor. It's always great to have these conversations and start to get to know everybody. Answer your questions and we look forward to hopefully seeing you all in the fall.

Yes, yeah, pretty much the same. You know. Thank you for attending and definitely thank you. This student panelists here. You know as you attend other events, definitely speak with the students. You know that I think that's one thing we kind of miss from doing our sessions. You know, in person usually I just stand around and do nothing and then all the people who are visiting you know meet with students. I think that's going to be really crucial. You know moving forward. So yeah, thank you again.

OK, thank you all for attending. If you have any questions please let us know.

And hope put up.

Alright.

Here's Megan OK. She'll take over now.

Just a shameless plug for some of our other computer science specific events that we have coming up for accepted students in the next few weeks.

So we have a women in computer science webinar next Wednesday, March 31st. Several media professor events scheduled throughout March and April. So visit our CS website for accepted students by using the code on the slide there.

And we also have a virtual club fair and opportunity one on one with current students coming up on Thursday, April 20th. So stay tuned for more details about that as well.

And then, like Linda was about to say, if you have any follow up questions, feel free to reach out to Linda or myself and we'd be happy to answer your questions or direct you to the right people who could provide an answer.

And thank you all for attending.

Bye bye.

Thanks everybody, thank you all. Be well, be safe. Will see you soon.

Looks like Rick and David signed off already. I'm going to sign off also, but I'm going to say thank you students again, very much for taking time out of here. I know you're all very busy and I really appreciate you guys taking the time out of your schedules to help us out with us.

Thank you Linda.

Yes, good luck. Everyone is arresting you.

I thought you weren't there anymore.

I just hit one of the buttons and I disappeared.

Ha.

Alright, I'm I'm signing off.

Sounds good, will see you all.

Thanks nearly.

OK, see ya.

Thank you.

Add.