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Paper (refereed) Information Systems Curriculum

Recommended Citation: Critcher, A, K K Agarwal, J Sigle, and D Foley. At the Crossroads of Traditional Computing and Applied Computing. In The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2001, v 18 (Cincinnati): §16a.

At the Crossroads of Traditional Computing and Applied Computing

Refereed

Adrienne Critcher    [a1] [a2]
Computer Science Department
Louisiana State University in Shreveport    [u1] [u2]
Shreveport, Louisiana, USA    [c1] [c2]

Krishna Kumar Agarwal    [a1] [a2]
Computer Science Department
Louisiana State University in Shreveport    [u1] [u2]
Shreveport, Louisiana, USA    [c1] [c2]

John Sigle    [a1] [a2]
Computer Science Department
Louisiana State University in Shreveport    [u1] [u2]
Shreveport, Louisiana, USA    [c1] [c2]

Dave Foley    [a1] [a2]
Computer Science Department
Louisiana State University in Shreveport    [u1] [u2]
Shreveport, Louisiana, USA    [c1] [c2]

For the last two decades the Computer Science Department at Louisiana State University in Shreveport has offered a traditional undergraduate program, producing hundreds of highly qualified graduates who have achieved successful professional careers in the field of computing. During this time, the field of computing has been evolving at a frantic pace. The demand for instruction and training, at several levels in our field, presents an enormous opportunity for universities. Our current programs meet some of this demand, but leave a large part of it unserved. In short, much of the expertise in demand today in the computing field is of a technical and applied nature in such areas as networking and Web-based e-commerce. Our current traditional Computer Science degree, which is focused on the theory and foundations of algorithms and programming, is of a somewhat different nature. We would like to add a new applied computing degree and retain our traditional accredited degree. However, we simply do not have the faculty, or the university resources to obtain needed faculty, to support both programs. In the face of declining state support of public education, we are struggling with our subsequent decision and proposal to our administration to discontinue our current traditional program in favor of a more applied program. We suspect that we are not alone among Computer Science Departments in trying to resolve similar curriculum issues.

Keywords: curriculum issues, applied computing, IT, computer science, CSAB accreditation

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