University Curriculum Committee

Proposal for new Academic Plan, Plan change, or Plan Deletion

9. For undergraduate plans, will this requirement be a student individualized plan*?  no  yes

*A Student Individualized Plan is an academic requirement that varies by student, such as the 15-unit BAiLS focus, for which
coursework requirements are established by the student in consultation with the advisor.

If yes, the academic unit listed at the top of this form hereby takes responsibility for providing complete
information about each student’s individual requirements for the degree audit system.

10. For undergraduate plans, will a milestone** be used to:

 a. verify satisfactory completion of a non course requirement.

 b. indicate admission to a major.

 c. will not be used.

**A Milestone is used to record noncourse requirements, such as the HRM 800-hour work experience requirement or admission to Business Major status.
If yes, the academic unit listed at the top of this form hereby takes responsibility for maintaining the
milestone and keeping individual student records up to date.
11. Please list the Learning Outcomes of the Plan/Subplan (see degree major assessment webpage -
http://www4.nau.edu/assessment/main/degree/degree.htm).
Outcome 1: The CS program provides a quality, personalized, undergraduate education.

Outcome 2: The CS program encourages students to integrate computing skills with any of a broad range of other disciplines.

Outcome 3: Graduates will have well-developed leadership, project management, and small team development skills.

Outcome 4: Graduates will have a strong background in all practical aspects of computer science. They will be able to design and build high quality, functional solutions to real-world computing challenges.

Outcome 5: Graduates will have a solid background in modern international engineering practice, including intercultural teaming skills and awareness of international engineering issues.

Outcome 6: Graduates will be acquainted with major professional ethical issues and ways of thinking about them.

Outcome 7: Graduates will have strong communication and technical writing skills, including delivery of effective presentations, reporting, and proposal writing.
12. Justification for proposal. Please indicate how past assessments of student learning prompted proposed changes.
This program was initiated to serve two groups of students – 1) Chinese 1+2+1 and 2) students who are more suited to careers in smaller scale, hands-on applied programming. It is now apparent that the first group of students will not be coming, so changes to the program are being made to better help it meet the needs of the second group of students, to streamline the program requirements, and to serve the needs of employers like the US Geological Survey for these graduates.
13. If this academic plan/subplan will require additional faculty, space, or equipment, how will these requirements be satisfied?

NA
14. Will this academic plan/subplan affect other majors, liberal studies course offerings, plans/subplans, curricula, or enrollment at NAU?
If so, attach supporting documentation from the affected departments/units and college dean.

No

15. Will present library holdings support this academic plan/subplan?

NA

Certifications

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Department Chair/ Unit Head (if appropriate) Date
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Chair of college curriculum committee Date

Dean of college Date

For committee use only

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For University Curriculum Committee Date

Action taken: __________approved as submitted __________approved as modified

Pauline,

For quite some time we have been concerned about the low enrollment numbers of our Applied Computer Science (ACS) degree. We originally created this program at the express request of the Provost, to provide an attractive program for China 1-2-1 students coming to NAU, as well as to fill a critical void between full-scale software engineering and computer information systems (CIS) for our domestic constituents. Last summer I voiced my concerns over low enrollment in an email to the director of the Center for International Education, Harvey Charles, pointing out that the China 1-2-1 program has not been providing the large number of students promised for this program. His recommendation was to keep the program in place for at least one year and revisit the issue, if the problem still persists.

Over the last few weeks, however, it has become apparent that the China 1-2-1 program is not going to produce the results that were originally expected, and thus, we’ve decided to take this opportunity to fully reorient the program to better serve the growing domestic market for applied programmers; freed of the constraints of catering to the China 1-2-1 needs, we can remove the impediments that have prevented it from being more attractive to our own domestic students. At the same time, we are streamlining the curriculum so that it differs from the BSCS by at least 24 units, but requires only one additional course (down from three) to deliver the program. In this way, the revised program provides maximum benefits for a minimal investment of additional resources. We feel that this redesign is a model for the sort of curricular efficiency the President and Provost have called for.

BSACS: Program Vision and Mission

In the original program proposal, we pointed out the growing domestic market for applied programmers, as more and more companies integrate computing technology, creating a need for personnel that can not only configure and deploy off-the-shelf solutions (a career profile for CIS majors), but that can create (relatively) small-scale software to streamline internal data management; this market has only grown in the years since. At the same time, a substantial number of students who were capable and promising programmers, but failed in the hard theoretical core of our flagship BSCS program expressed frustration at having to leave computer science completely, e.g., to take a CIS degree. What is needed is a program that allows us to retain gifted programmers, and that refocuses their training on the growing applied computing market. This concept was strongly supported by our industrial constituents on our Departmental Advisory Council (DAC), who enthusiastically agreed that well-trained applied programmers are desperately needed to fill the gap between elite software engineers and non-programming IT support staff.

Our existing BSACS program was designed to meet this need, but was always hampered by the unique needs of the (promised) China 1-2-1 constituency. We now envision a thoroughly restructured program that lowers the threshold to acquiring a computing degree, with specific focus on training that puts an emphasis on practical programming skills. It will be substantially different from a CIS degree, which focuses on system administration and commercial software configuration and deployment (versus software creation). It will also be different from our BSCS, which focuses on creating top-tier software engineers, who are of course good programmers, but with training that emphasizes design of large-scale software architectures, development of advanced algorithms and theoretical models, and enterprise-scale software project work.

1. 
   We expect to see a significant increase of the enrollment numbers in the ACS, reaching at least 100 students and 15 graduates/year at the end of three years.
   
2. 
   The BSACS will help us to retain those students who are struggling with difficult classes in our BSCS program by allowing them to drop back into the BSACS. Foundational classes like CS 126, CS 136 and CS249 in the BSCS, are time-shifted by one year in the ACS program making it especially easy for such students in the BSCS to transfer over into the ACS, without any delay in their overall degree progression.
   
3. 
   We also expect to see noticeably lower DWF rates in rigorous BSCS classes both from students who transfer to BSACS and from freshmen who are not well-suited for the BSCS being placed from the outset of their program into the BSACS.
   
4. 
   We will directly serve a growing market in Applied Computing. The need for graduates from our BSACS program will be strong as evidenced by our discussions with our Program Advisory Council industry members and enrollments in similar programs nationwide. In a press release from the Computing Research Association dated March 24, 2010, enrollment nationwide is up 14 percent between 2007 and 2009 while the NAU CS and ACS programs increased 55.9% between 2008 and 2010. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, computing occupations are likely to grow by 22.2% between now and 2018, which is much faster than average.
   

Wolf-Dieter Otte