What does Computer Science at Wheaton do to stay “with the times”?
As you might imagine, the world of computing is one of the fastest paced disciplines. Like our students, the faculty are “in school,” constantly staying current in their research field and thinking hard about how the research should and can impact the curriculum. For example, embedded devices in general and PDAs in particular are a hot market item at the moment. So the question arises: how does one program these small devices? What are the concerns that are different than for programming on big machines? One of the Computer Science professors got a small grant to buy 10 PDAs. We then offered a new course in Programming Mobile Devices and gave each student their own PDA for the semester with the charge: find a client who needs an application on a PDA, design it, and build a prototype. In computing, learning is doing; staying current is just part of the plan.
