Significant changes have occurred to Computer Science at Simmons. The faculty of CASPS has officially voted to establish Computer Science as a program and changes have been made to the curriculum.

What does it mean to have computer science designated as a program? Basically it means that an even greater focus will be placed on the computer science major and minor. Professor Bruce Tis has been appointed program director and will manage the program. The program will have greater visibility and additional resources. Our goals include significant curriculum development and increasing the numbers of majors and minors.
 

Curriculum Changes

During the fall of 1999 significant changes were made to the prerequisite structure for our computer science courses. These changes are effective with the Fall 2000 semester and will be reflected in the 2000/2001 Course Catalog. The WEB site has already been updated.

• Mth120 Calculus I is no longer a prerequisite for Mth210, hence you can take the courses in either order. If you have the choice it is preferable to take Mth120 first.
• Mth210 is no longer a co-requisite for CS232 and CS226. You may take CS232 and CS226 prior to taking Mth210. Mth210 should be taken as soon as possible and definitely before CS233.
• The prerequisites for CS330 have been changed from CS232 and CS226 to CS233 and CS226.
• The prerequisites for CS227 have been changed from CS226 and CS112 to just CS112 or consent of instructor.

New Course

The curriculum committee has approved a new course. The course, CS335 Object Oriented Design and Software Development, is an elective and will be offered for the first time during the Spring 2001 semester. You may contact Prof. Veilleux for additional information.
 
 

New Laboratory Equipment

This summer we replaced all the Pentium 166 MHz and Pentium II 400 MHz machines in the lab. We now have 16 Pentium III 550 MHz Hewlett Packard PCs with 128 MB of memory, 8GB of disk storage, 17" monitors, Windows 98, and zip drives. These machines are a big improvement over what we had last year. Zip disks have become the storage media of choice throughout the campus so you are encouraged to purchase a zip disk.