Table of Contents for Self-Study

Since the retirement of Tom Green, the Computer Science program has been steadily declining and will require at least one full time faculty member to grow the program, as well as the addition of carefully chosen courses taught by existing full-time faculty and to-be-hired CS adjunct faculty.

The CS program must work to update its curriculum to reflect the courses actually being taught at neighboring four year institutions. A number of different factors must be considered in choosing these courses.

Few of our current courses articulate as satisfying requirements for a CS major at four year colleges. All of our transferable courses must be made to articulate so our students do not have to repeat coursework when they transfer.

Our CS courses must prepare our students as well, if not better, than comparable four year courses. This must be done without sacrificing the under-prepared students. The CS program proposes to do this via a novel method of creating a simultaneously offered beginning and advanced version of all transferable courses.

Students, throughout the California community college system, are often confused about the various computer related programs which are available. This is certainly the case at CCC. We have several ideas to clarify this situation.

Significant help is requested of CCC/District in supporting the Computer Science program as outlined below on page 15 in section “Recommended actions for Contra Costa College”.

The “Recommendations” section found below on page 15, lists all recommendations of this report in one place. All of these recommendations will also be found embedded within the body of this report as well.

The “Action Plan” section found below on page 16, states both the actions the Computer Science program plans to take over the next four years.

Summary Data

Appendices A through C contain the sources of this summary data.

Enrollment has dropped from 70 students to 24 students in the two years between Fall 1999 and Fall 2001. During the same period the weekly student contact hours per full time equivalent faculty has dropped from 520 hours to 191 hours. Similarly, the number of full time equivalent students per full time equivalent faculty has dropped from 17.8 students to 6.6 students.

Roughly half of the Computer Science students over the past two years have been Asian, which is not an under-represented group. The distant next most predominant group is white students. The next grouping is a three-way tie shared by Hispanic, African American and Filipino students.

A mailing label run for Computer Science students produced 121 self-proclaimed Computer Science majors. 42 more were added to this number via a declaration of major form passed out in Computer Science classes near the end of the Spring 2002 semester.

A Spring 2002 survey of Computer Science students reveals that from half to one fifth of the students desire the addition of the following listed-by-popularity new courses: Advanced C++ (52%), Advanced Unix (37%), Advanced Java (30%), Neural Networks / Artificial Intelligence (22%), and Assembly Language Programming (19%).

70% of the students are interested in forming a Computer Science club and 81% of the students plan to transfer to a four-year college of which two-thirds plan to major in Computer Science. 90% of the students believe it is important or very important that CS courses count toward a four year major.

Interest in extending times when classes are offered ranged from half to one sixth of the students in the following listed-by-popularity class times: Summer (52%), Evenings (37%), Weekends (30%), Late Afternoon (19%), and Early Morning (15%).

The annotated comments from students request we provide them with lab software for their computers, with more and better CS courses, and with more teachers.

On 5/21/2002, Kenyetta Tribble provided a list off the 4 year colleges to which CCC students transferred in our 2001-2002 school year. The data was aggregated to remove the student’s names.

Cal State University			University of California			Private
	Hayward	87		Berkeley	23		St. Mary’s	3
	San Francisco	63		Davis	17		Morehouse	1
	Sonoma	6		Los Angeles	4		Samuel Merrit	1
	San Diego	2		Santa Cruz	3		Stanford	1
	Humbolt	1		Riverside	2		Tuskegee	1
	Sacramento	1					USF	1

The Computer Science portion of the Intersegmental Major Preparation Articulated Curriculum (IMPAC) Annual Report for 2001-2002 recommends:

· CS majors should take the same core sequence as the other science and engineering majors, namely the one year physics series and the science oriented calculus.

· Remediation/bridge courses should be provided upon transfer to a UC campus.

In addition, several concerns were voiced in the IMPAC report:

· Community college transfer students do not have the same level of rigor in their coursework as the four-year lower division students.

· Students are confused with the variety of community college computer programs (CS, CIS, CCT, etc). Students taking the wrong courses will suffer from unnecessary and/or insufficient preparation.

· Variety of programming languages used to teach Computer Science concepts causes problems for transfer students

· Computer Science is often not a four-year program at four year colleges. Community college students with weak math skills and job commitments may take 7 to 8 years to achieve a BS degree.

Analysis of Summary Data

The productivity of the program has been steadily declining. This is most likely due to the retirement of the very popular and only full time computer science instructor, Tom Green. Having no smooth transition to a suitable replacement further complicates the situation. An engineering instructor, Chen Tsai, successfully took over the language courses which Tom Green had taught. A part-time mathematics instructor taught the remaining courses, which proved to be fairly unpopular with students due to the teacher’s lack of experience and knowledge of CS. A computer scientist, Tom Murphy, was hired in the Fall of 2001 as a 2/3 instructor in the Computer Science program and a 1/3 instructor in the Computer Information Systems program.

There are barely enough courses currently being offered to justify calling this a Computer Science program. A large number of the actual and potential CCC Computer Science students go to DVC, both because there are more courses offered and because they judge the quality of the program to be significantly greater at DVC. Students who are taking their courses at CCC are gravely concerned because they typically have to repeat CCC CS courses when they go to a four year college. The majority of the classes for which we do have articulation agreements are courses which are no longer being offered at CCC. Curiously enough, they are still part of the graduation requirement for an AA degree in CS at CCC.

This highlights the need for a revamping of the Computer Science AA degree, both to reflect the courses currently offered, as well as to offer the full complement of courses required of the under division Computer Science student at our neighboring two-year and four-year colleges.

“Appendix D: IMPAC Annual Report 2001-2002”, shown below on page 21, offers the recommendation that a year of calculus as well as physics should be required of a four-year CS major. We believe some level of both Calculus and physics should be required of the CCC CS degree. “Appendix E: ITIEP Model IT Curricula”, shown below on page 25, is a valuable resource and should be consulted when forming the revised requirements of our AA degree in CS. It provides a comprehensive Information Technology curriculum available for the 27 community colleges of the Bay Area. As indicated by the IMPAC report, CS courses need to provide at least the same level of preparation as that available at four-year institutions. A potential solution to the dilemma of having under prepared students and maintaining the four year content is discussed below on page 8 in the section on “Innovative Teaching Approaches”. This will likely require adding prerequisites to the CS AA degree as discussed in “Course Requirements’ below on page 9.

The summary data also highlights the need for more courses and sections, during the day, in the evenings and during the summer, which was corroborated by the student survey. These additions, particularly the additional sections, must be added in a careful and controlled manner, given the current low enrollment levels. Given the current staffing, the best choice for expansion lies in beginning to hire adjunct faculty. See “Staffing Factors” below on page 13 for a further discussion of hiring adjunct faculty.

The CS program is not drawing enough under-represented students to reflect their numbers in our service area. Both CS instructors are CSE mentors which help us support under-represented students. Developing the introductory and advanced version of all transferable courses (see “Innovative Teaching Approaches” section below on page 8) should also be a strong support for the under-prepared student, a category in which many under-represented students fall.

It is clear the CS students are interested in forming some kind of computer related club. Student clubs must be formed by students; however the CS faculty is more than willing to be advisors to a club, as well as to help initiate a club.

Although we have 163 Computer Science students of record, we do not, in actuality, have that many CS students. Most students declaring themselves CS majors are most likely seeking a vocational career involving computers. Students will say they are seeking a Computer Science degree, both because that is the most recognizable program name, as well as because it is the computer vocation which corresponds to some of the highest paying jobs in our service area. The section “Articulation” below on page 9 suggests a solution to this situation.

We have articulation agreements with the vast majority of the schools to which CCC students transfer. We have covered 88% of the students who transferred in 2002, by articulating with CSU Hayward, CSU SF, UCB, and UC Davis.

Overall Description/Assessment of Program

The Computer Science program’s primary purpose is to prepare students to transfer into a Computer Science program at a four year college. To this end, the Computer Science program offers programming classes, as well as providing some of the lower division courses offered by these same institutions. The computer languages are the same as those taught in the Computer Science programs of the neighboring four year colleges and universities The secondary purpose of the Computer Science program is to support students in transferring into any four year college program, which is typically a science program.

The Computer Science program also has a vocational component. The same language courses, which give students a necessary background to pursue the four year degrees outlined above, can also be used to prepare a student for an entry level job in computer programming or to update the skills of a currently employed computer programmer.

The Computer Science program at CCC is at a fragile point. It is important to not only leave the program intact, but to strengthen it with dedicated full-time instructors, adjunct instructors and the designation of being a full fledged department. This is further elaborated in sections “Staffing Factors”, “Physical Resources”, and “Staffing Resources” below on pages 12, 13, and 13, respectively.

Instruction

Evaluation Methods

The Computer Science Program is using the regular CCC instructor evaluations as a means of assessing both instructors of the CS program. This gives feedback on their teaching both from peers and from students. Given the declining enrollment, it is important to be mindful of student feedback since students have and do vote with their feet. Further, students tend to be very insightful, for instance, the student member of this self-study, Bonnie Chantarotwong, has provided keen insights in to the direction of the CS program, based on feedback she has culled from her peers and from her own observations.

The job and skill surveys which the Cal State EDD will be assisting us with (see “Job Preparation” below on page 11) will help us identify emerging jobs and skills which will help us evaluate how the vocational part of the Computer Science program is meeting the occupational needs of our students.

Every four years, each of the courses of the Computer Science program are reviewed, updated and resubmitted to the CIC, which is another method of evaluation we use.

Academic Standards and Consistency

There are only two faculty members who currently teach Computer Science courses. One teaches the language courses and the other teaches the remaining courses. Our courses are currently so lightly attended there has been no need to offer multiple sections. Thus, consistency is maintained by default. Another benefit of creating a Computer Science Department, as discussed in section “Physical Resources” below on page14, is it will help form more of a CS identity from which consistency can more easily flow as we add new faculty to the program.

Instructional Strategies

CS courses are taught with both a standard lecture component as well with lab work working on the computers.

Students are, of course, requested to ask questions, which typically has limited success, especially in the beginning of the quarter. Calling students to the board to work through problems has helped increase student participation. This has helped to surface problems which would otherwise not have been raised.

We are also using independent studies as an alternative to conventional classroom lectures as discussed in “Innovative Teaching Approaches” section below on page 7.

We will start using a wireless classroom in Fall 2002 to allow us to fairly seamlessly merge conventional lectures with the experience of being in a computer laboratory, a capability that currently only exists in a handful of classes in the country.

Technology

A laptop and a portable projector have been used in a couple of different courses to be able to directly illustrate some of the dynamic CS concepts. A grant was obtained, through HP, which will bring thirty wireless laptops to Computer Science courses in Fall 2002 This extends the technology used even further by allowing each student in the class access to a PC, during class and as a part of the class. In addition, there will be five instructor wireless laptops serving as the class website while the class is being taught.

Websites exist for some of the courses where all relevant courses material and supplementary resources are found.

The ten robots, discussed in section “Innovative Teaching Approaches” below on page 8, are one of the latest technological additions to the CS program.

Professor Dick Walters of the UC Davis Computer Science Department has developed RCT (Remote Collaboration Tool). He has graciously offered to assist us in using it, when we wish to incorporate it as part of a CS distance learning program. More info on RCT can be found at http://davinci.cs.ucdavis.edu/.

Scheduling Approaches

Computer Science courses are scheduled as part of the general scheduling of all Natural and Applied Science courses. The division goal is to allow as much flexibility as possible for students to take courses across disciplines that require or can benefit from similar subject matter.

Part of the “Appendix A: Computer Science Survey Spring 2002” shown below on page 17, identifies the times of day students would like to see more courses offered. Extending our summer and evening offerings appear to be the most popular and fruitful choice.

Innovative Teaching Approaches

In conjunction with the tutor center and Jason Berner, we have instituted tutor center tutors and in-class tutors for COMP-280 for both Fall 2001 and Spring 2002 semesters. This has been a great success. See “Support Services”, below on page 13, for a desired extension of this success.

We recommend addressing the dilemma of reconciling the community college open door policy with the need for transfer fidelity four year under division courses, by splitting all transferable Computer Science courses into an introductory and an advanced course. Both classes should essentially be run at the same time and in the same room. It will most likely require CCC/District permission to do this. Splitting the class will allow the introductory class to be tailored to the pace of the students, and will allow the advanced class to be tailored to the pace of the material. Running the classes at the same time avoids cutting in half the number of available students for classes already struggling with enrollment. The advanced class would meet for an additional half hour and would have additional homework, lab and exam problems. This also simplifies moving students, as needed, between courses based on their demonstrated performance.

We recommend that CCC/District institute an in-progress (IP) grading option. This would allow the CS program the option of having its advanced courses offered as A/IP or A/B/IPcourses, which would ensure mastery at a level greater than or equal to that of comparable courses available from the four-year institutions. The intention is that all students achieve an A (or B) in a course, but if they do not have that level of mastery, then the IP grade would indicate they must repeat the course in order to receive a transferable grade. Other disciplines could use the IP grade to possibly replace F or D grades. It allows us a more student oriented, as well as a mastery oriented style of grading.

Ten robots were purchased, via a VATEA grant, to motivate student interest and excellence in programming. We will be stressing behavior based robotics which has application to not only 4 year Computer Science programs, but to students pursuing advanced degrees in psychology and neurophysiology as well. In terms of courses, we are planning on a series of Fall 2002 independent studies in robotics, as well as a robotics maze running contest, CCC Programming Olympiad (C3PO), which we desire to inaugurate sometime in the 2002-2003 school year, provided we locate a source of sufficient funds.

The Computer Science program has used Independent Studies to offer an individual student material beyond that currently covered formally in the CS program. This technique will be further explored in Spring 2002 to offer a seminar on the programming language Perl and another similar seminar on robotics, as mentioned above. It is expected that courses in both Perl and robotics will grow out of these independent studies. Another expected outgrowth will be an increased level of collaboration and initiative on the part of the students, since there are no lectures to fall back on as a primary way to learn the course material formal. This also makes available another learning modality for CS material outside that of formal classroom lectures.

Curriculum

Degrees, Certificates, and General Education

The CS program currently offers an AA degree in CS. This is good in that it nominally marks completion of coursework covering the under division portion of a four year CS degree. Unfortunately, the majority of the coursework completed must currently be repeated at the four year institution since the majority of our CS courses do not count for credit in the major, as noted in the ”Articulation” section, below on page 9. The current curriculum contains courses which are both outdated, as well as no longer being taught, which makes it impossible to formally complete the AA degree.

We recommend an extensive survey be completed to determine the courses being taught, corresponding prerequisites, and degree requirements of nearby Computer Science institutions. This includes the four year colleges to which our students transfer, the surrounding community colleges, and the computer science related trade schools. These results should be compared to the ACM/IEEE Curriculum Guidelines, as well as the ITIEP Model IT Curricula in order to fashion the future curricular direction of our CS program. This will help us define our standard courses offered, as well as those periodically offered such as COMP-100 (special topic in computer science) and COMP-298 (independent study in computer science) courses. Any periodically scheduled courses which emerge should be listed in the Catalog as examples of special topics or independent studies which we offer at CCC.

We recommend adding requirements to the AA degree in CS to include a year of calculus and up to a year of physics. This is as advised in the “Appendix D: IMPAC Annual Report 2001-2002: Computer Summary” found on page 21 below. This will require integration with findings from the other needed curricular research. It will likely result in some courses being required as a prerequisite before beginning the major, with the remainder being incorporated into the major. We may need to modify the IMPAC recommendation, incorporating less than a full year of physics.

We recently completed an update of the course materials for COMP-160 and COMP-95A/B/C/D as part of the standard four year course review cycle in place at CCC. We are working with Dr Joe Ledbetter and the Faculty Senate to update CIC procedures. The expected result from these efforts is that all CS curricular materials will be available online, which will make it much easier to keep current. This will include syllabi, course outlines and the textbooks in use.

Both Computer Science instructors are involved in facilitating learning outside the formal classroom environment. This includes being mentors with the Center for Science Excellence (CSE), where we meet with students to listen to guest lecturers, address scholarship issues, and take field trips. We also expect to be advisors for a student run club in Computer Science and/or Robotics.

It may be worth developing a certificate in programming languages, to acknowledge the programming skills typically sought by employers of computer professionals.

Course Requirements

One of the results of the survey of nearby institutions will be to identify the standard prerequisites in place in our nearby four year institutions, which should then be put in place for our corresponding courses. This process will be driven by our degree requirements outlined in the preceding section (“Degrees, Certificates, and General Education”)

A way of helping the under-prepared student, and to keep the program to two years, is to institute a series of prerequisites which must be satisfied before the program is begun. This is similar to how the nursing program currently handles its program. Of course, students will be able to take any individual classes, provided they satisfy the prerequisites for that course. It would improve overall retention and success in CS courses if pre-tests were administered at the first meeting. Students would then be better able to judge their readiness for the course.

“Appendix F: Justification of Course Prerequisites” on page 28 below shows the justification for course COMP‑252 having course COMP‑251 as a prerequisite.

Articulation

As outlined in the “Degrees, Certificates, and General Education” section above, there is much work to be done to have our CS courses both articulate with four year colleges for their General Ed requirements, as well as counting towards requirements of the major. There are a number of courses which need to be dropped from the major, as well as a number of courses which need to be articulated to count towards the major. We recommend having all transferable CS courses count towards credit in the CS major at all colleges to which our students transfer in CS. The first phase of this is outlined in the matrix shown in “Appendix C: Current and Desired ASSIST Articulation Agreements” shown on page 20 below.

Kenyetta Tribble is taking this table with her to the ASSIST articulation meeting taking place in August 2002 to seek these new articulations. The CS program will need to contact the faculty in any institutions not granting the articulations we seek, in order to negotiate changes and remove impediments. Our goal is to have the desired articulations in place for the 2003‑2004 school year.

We recommend reviewing all schools to which CCC students transfer to see if articulation from our CS courses to additional schools is warranted.

Making sure our students understand what each of the computer related programs offers is a kind of internal articulation. We recommend two related actions to clarify the distinction among the computer related disciplines. First, a consistent and accurate data sheet needs to be developed by the computer related disciplines. Second, a meeting with both counseling and the transfer center staff needs to occur so the info in the data sheet corresponds to what the counselors relay to our students. A start at the data sheet was begun in Fall 2001 and has been put in subsequent course schedules. The info in the data sheet needs to be printed in both the schedule and the catalog under the Computer Science program. The data sheet needs to be automatically sent to a student whenever they declare themselves a CS major. All the computer related programs should reference it as a way of clarifying the preparation available at CCC in the various computer related career paths.

Student Success

Special Needs of Students

Students have expressed desires for classes in Perl, as well as robotics which is leading to several independent study contracts with students for Fall 2002, as discussed in section “Innovative Teaching Approaches” above on page 8.

Hiring adjunct instructors and offering more evening and summer courses should help address the special needs of part-time and non-traditional students.

Our participation in the formation of the NSF National Advanced Technological Education Regional Center for High Performance Computing, as discussed in the section on ”Job Preparation” below on page 11, reflects additional support we will be offering to address the special needs of part-time and non-traditional students.

We recommend the CS program continue to strongly support our Center for Science Excellence (CSE), which is a MESA program specifically designed to support under-represented students. CSE has had a significant impact on the quality of the students who enter our CS program

Student Support Services

The tutor center has hired COMP-280 students to work in the tutor center, as well as to be in-class tutors for COMP‑280. Adding the in-class tutor component provided a significant support service for students in the class. All at-risk students in the class, as well as other students, took advantage of the in-class tutoring. It even led to study sessions led by the tutor outside of class. This significantly increased at-risk students’ grades by approximately one grading level. See “Support Services”, below on page 13, for requested extensions of this program.

Both CS teachers are mentors in the CSE program by which we offer a strong form of support for students through friendship and role-modeling outside of the formal classroom environment.

Student Recruitment

We plan to use the ten robots recently purchased, see “Innovative Teaching Approaches” above on page 8, as a High School recruiting tool due to the excitement they generate. Hearing the firsthand experience of our CS students will also provide lasting and significant impact. We will also be circulating the flyers for robot contests when they are started. We also expect the robot contest to generate some press coverage.

The CS data sheets, see “Articulation” above on page 9, generated for the CCC counselors, will also serve as recruitment tools outlining the variety of computer related programs we offer at CCC.

Student Retention

Creating the introductory and advanced versions of all transfer courses will serve to improve student retention. The use of tutors, in-class and in the tutor center, has improved student retention and learning.

We expect addressing the concerns of “Appendix A: Computer Science Survey Spring 2002”, below on page 16, will also improve student retention.

Student Satisfaction

“Appendix A: Computer Science Survey Spring 2002”, shown below on page 17, reflects areas of success in the Computer Science program, as well as several areas of improvement addressed throughout this document. The areas of needed improvement, verbalized by the students, reflect many of the reasons why CS class size has declined over the past two years.

Job Preparation

Computer Science “on the job skills” are primarily language based. CCC has just received an NSF grant to form a National Advanced Technological Education Regional Center for High Performance Computing, as well as to develop a High Performance Computing curriculum. The CCC administrator of this grant is the CS instructor, Tom Murphy. This will provide training for students to be able to become HPC maintainers, HPC system administrators, HPC network administrators, and HPC parallel programmers. The HPC program will also involve internships to give real world experience in these areas.

Through BAY ITC we have had an initial contact with our local workforce development office as well as the State of California Employment Development Department (EDD) to identify the emerging computer related careers (See “Community Outreach/Articulation” below on page13.)

The Bay Area is one of the centers of robotics development; work with the CCC robotics program (see section “Innovative Teaching Approaches” above on page 8) could lead into a job for a suitably motivated student. We will learn more about these possibilities as this new program develops.

Staff Development

Staffing Factors

There has been talk of combining the various computer related groups on campus to one large department/division. We recommend that the CS program remain intact, as well as part of the Natural and Applied Science Division. This is essential to if the CS program is to remain viable, since there is already much work to do in convincing students that the CCC CS program is credible. Moving it out of the Science division would further weaken credibility. It will also severely diminish their opportunity for interactions with the other science students. Combining computer related programs would dilute the effort rebuild the CS program by having department members focus on the many issues facing CIS and CCT, instead of just being focused on helping CS to grow. This will prove to be a significant factor in the future success of the CS program.

The CS program deserves, at minimum, at least one dedicated full-time faculty member. We recommend assigning the Computer Science instructor, Tom Murphy, full time to the Computer Science program.

At the present time the CS program has the partial involvement of two full time faculty members: 2/3 time of an instructor on loan from engineering and 2/3 time of a computer science instructor. We recommend hiring adjunct instructors, as our enrollment justifies it. The number of adjunct faculty we hire is recommended to be subject to Chapter 973, Statutes of 1988 (AB 1725, Vasconcellos), which expresses the legislative intent to “recognize and make efforts to address long-standing policy of the Board of Governors that at least 75 percent of the hours of credit instruction in the College, as a system, should be taught by full-time instructors.” Unfortunately, this would currently allow only a 4/9 FTE to be filled by adjunct faculty, which comes to only one course per semester. Note that assigning Tom Murphy full-time to CS will immediately allow one additional course to be taught by an adjunct per semester. In order to fully support the CS program we may need to temporarily go out of compliance with AB 1725.

The acting Computer Science program chair has been collecting names and contact information from paper screening of CIS job openings, but no contact will be made until the interviewing of candidates for open positions is complete. Care must be taken to hire adjunct faculty who are both knowledgeable and dynamic to avoid a further decline in enrollment. This kind of care is also resonant with the student survey, see “Appendix A: Computer Science Survey Spring 2002”, shown below on page 17.

We recommend that CCC hire an additional computer scientist, when the program grows sufficiently to warrant such a hiring. This will provide a good foundation of staffing for the Computer Science program over the next few years. It will be essential should the engineering instructor, Chen Tsai, return to exclusively teaching engineering when the engineering instructor, Nouri Shahabi, retires.

Professional Activities

Computer Science faculty members are currently involved with Bay ITC, the Great Teacher seminar, Street Tech, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab IT Industry – Education Partnership (ITIEP) workshops. Both faculty members are currently involved with MESA and the CCC Center for Science excellence. Both faculty members have taken or are currently taking the “Foundation Course in Molecular Biology” and the “Institute in Functional Genomics, Bioinformatics and Proteomics”, both through the Biotechnology program at UC Davis.

Funds are needed to support each CS faculty member in attending at least one conference or workshop a year in order to keep abreast of the ever changing Computer Science arena. The World Wide Web Conference, the Perl Conference, and the SuperComputing Conference are examples of appropriate possible conferences.

Community Outreach/Articulation

Curricular articulation with four year colleges is discussed in section “Articulation” above on page 9.

An initial outreach has taken place with the Contra Costa County Workforce Investment Board (WIB) and the California Employee Development Department (EDD) through the Bay ITC conference. We recommend continuing to collaborate with EDD and our WIB in order to better understand the nature of the emerging computer related career paths and job skills. This will help the Computer Science program supply job candidates to employers in our service area. The Employee Development Department is willing to conduct a focused survey to identify emergent jobs in our area in support of the NSF High Performance Computing grant (see “Job Preparation” above on page11.)

The C3PO robotics contest should prove to be of interest to the High School students in our area as well as to the public at large. See section “Innovative Teaching Approaches” above on page 8 for more about the robots. The CCC robot program will be one of the GATE activities, for gifted and talented middle college high school students, starting in Fall 2002.

Resources

Physical Resources

There are plans currently underway to architect the refurbishment of both the Physical Science and the Biology building. Suggestions from the Computer Science program have been made to have the rooms wired with computer cables, as well as to have at least these and the Chemistry Building instrumented to provide wireless support. The HP Wireless classroom has not yet been delivered, however we believe the wireless laptop will become an essential part of course delivery in the future. If this is done, then it is not as essential to create an extra computer lab as part of the remodel.

We recommend CCC create a budgeted Computer Science Department. This will give the program necessary support, both in terms of identity, as well as in terms of financial flexibility. We were not awarded robot funding for either of two grants in which we participated. We need to create a robot maze and to advertise the robot contest, C3PO. We would also like to purchase some Handspring PDAs to extend the kind of control which can be programmed into these robots. See section “Innovative Teaching Approaches” above on page 8 for more on the robots.

Staffing Resources

In order to expand the Computer Science program, it will be necessary to hire adjunct faculty, both to extend the range of Computer Science subjects taught, as well as the range of times the CS courses are taught. This is even more essential now that the NSF HPC grant has come to pass. See section “Staffing Factors” above on page 12 for additional information.

As suggested above, in “Staffing Factors” on page 12, it is highly recommended that Tom Murphy be freed to devote all his energies to running the Computer Science program, if these courses and this program are to become viable.

Support Services

The tutors made available to COMP-280 in the 2001-2001 academic year proved to be very useful, especially in the second semester where in-class tutoring was added. Jason Berner, the tutor coordinator, is to be highly commended for working with us to enable this project. Students’ grades have reflected the utility of in-class tutoring. We recommend that CCC institutionalize in-class tutoring so it can be extended to all transferable CS courses. This will become even more important when CS transferable courses are split into beginning and advanced courses. The institutionalization could be supported by creating a course, akin to the COMP-95 lab course, which would help pay for the tutors. This could also be a way of funding the CSE tutoring program.

The Center for Science Excellence (CSE) program has provided essentially all students to the Computer Science program. We recommend CCC help CSE find stable ongoing financial support. This is necessary to keep the entire program intact, particularly the stipends that are paid to students, which is the most costly part of the program. All support possible from CCC, as well as the District, is requested to support CSE, which in turn will be one of the strongest supports for the Computer Science program.

Recommendations

We recommend that the Computer Science program be enhanced as outlined in the Action Plan below.

Recommendations appearing below are taken directly from the sections in which they appear in the preceding parts of this document. They are replicated here so they can be easy located and read as a coherent whole.

Recommended actions for the CS program

1. We recommend addressing the dilemma of reconciling the community college open door policy with the need for transfer fidelity four year under division courses, by splitting all transferable Computer Science courses into an introductory and an advanced course.

2. We recommend an extensive survey be completed to determine the courses being taught, corresponding prerequisites, and degree requirements of nearby Computer Science institutions.

3. We recommend adding requirements to the AA degree in CS to include a year of calculus and up to a year of physics.

4. We recommend having all transferable CS courses count towards credit in the CS major at all colleges to which our students transfer in CS.

5. We recommend reviewing all schools to which CCC students transfer to see if articulation from our CS courses to additional schools is warranted.

6. We recommend two related actions to clarify the distinction among the computer related disciplines. First, a consistent and accurate data sheet needs to be developed by the computer related disciplines. Second, a meeting with both counseling and the transfer center staff needs to occur so the info in the data sheet corresponds to what the counselors relay to our students.

7. We recommend the CS program continue to strongly support our Center for Science Excellence (CSE), which is a MESA program specifically designed to support under-represented students.

8. We recommend hiring adjunct instructors, as our enrollment justifies it.

9. We recommend continuing to collaborate with EDD and our WIB in order to better understand the nature of the emerging computer related career paths and job skills

Recommended actions for Contra Costa College (on behalf of the CS program)

2. We recommend that CCC/District institute an in-progress (IP) grading option.

3. We recommend that the CS program remain intact, as well as part of the Natural and Applied Science Division.

4. We recommend assigning the Computer Science instructor, Tom Murphy, full time to the Computer Science program.

5. We recommend that CCC hire an additional computer scientist, when the program grows sufficiently to warrant such a hiring.

6. We recommend CCC create a budgeted Computer Science Department

7. We recommend that CCC institutionalize in-class tutoring so it can be extended to all transferable CS courses.

8. We recommend CCC help CSE find stable ongoing financial support.

Action Plan

The action plan for the CS program over the next four years will address the following rank-ordered priorities:

1. Update the CS curriculum:

a. Analyze the Computer Science offerings and the Computer Science prerequisites of the surrounding community colleges, four year colleges, and the CS related trade schools to identify possible classes we should add to our curriculum.

b. Consider to what extent CIS, calculus and physics classes should either be part of the CS AA major or courses to be completed before beginning the major.

c. Identify any emergent CS related jobs and skill sets via consultation with our local workforce development office and the California EDD office.

d. Identify courses of the NSF High Performance Computing curriculum which should be integrated into the CS curriculum.

e. Compare all these results with ACM guidelines and the ITIEP model curriculum.

f. Construct a revised major for the CS AA degree and get it passed through the CIC. The major must be contained within four semesters.

2. Revise the articulation chart (“Appendix C: Current and Desired ASSIST Articulation Agreements” on page 20) to reflect the changes made to the CS major and pass it to the CCC articulation officer. Work with the CCC articulation officer and with personnel of the four year colleges not agreeing with the level of articulation we seek, so we may together resolve all conflicts. This resolution will likely be done by revising our course content or by helping the four year college re-evaluate the nature of our current coverage of course content.

3. Clarify the distinction between CIS and CS:

a. Together with the other computer related programs, generate a data sheet to describe the difference among them, which should automatically be sent to any student changing to a CS major.

b. Meet with counseling and the transfer center to form consistent data we pass to students about the computer related programs.

c. Publish the description of the computer related programs in the Computer Science section of the catalog, as well as in each semester’s schedule.

4. Restructure transferable CS courses into beginning and advanced courses

a. Get permissions to perform the restructuring from the appropriate places, e.g. administration, the faculty senate, and the CIC.

b. Work with CCC/District to institute an in progress (IP) grading option.

c. The teacher of record for each CS course should split the course into two pieces with essentially the same content. The introductory course should be repeatable and should be a credit/no credit course. The advanced course should be non-repeatable and should be a letter grade class, preferably an A/IP course, which meets for an extra half hour each class session beyond that of the corresponding intro course.

d. Pass these courses through the CIC for approval.

5. Extend the schedule to include evening sessions of key courses. Add key courses to the summer schedule. Take these schedule extensions only as enrollment and class size warrant it.

6. Hire adjunct faculty to teach needed additional courses.

7. Follow-up with administration on the progress of CCC with the tasks recommended for it in this report (see page 15).

Appendices

Appendix A: Computer Science Survey Spring 2002

Reports were produced by the CCC Office of Research and Planning. Question 3 had 43 responses and question 7 had 41 responses selected by the 27 respondents. The percentages were recalculated to reflect the number of respondents rather than the number of responses.

1. What Computer Science courses would you like to see offered at CCC?
A. Advanced UNIX	10	37.04%
B. Advanced JAVA	8	29.63%
C. Advanced C++	14	51.85%
D. Assembly Language	5	18.52%
E. Neural Networks/ Artificial Intelligence	6	22.22%
F. Other (please specify)	0	0.00%
2. Are you interested in a Computer Science Club?
A. Yes	19	70.37%
B. No	7	25.93%
C. No response	1	3.70%
3. Are you planning to transfer to a 4-year college?
A. Yes	22	81.48%
B. No	5	18.52%
C. No response	0	0.00%
4. If so, is it in Computer Science?
A. Yes	14	51.85%
B. No	7	25.93%
C. No response	6	22.22%
5. How important is it that Computer Science courses count towards a Computer Science major at a 4-year college? (Computer Science courses currently count as general education, very few count towards the Computer Science major.)
A. Very Important	16	59.26%
B. Important	8	29.63%