Mission Statement

The mission of the Department is to offer a high-quality liberal arts education in the art and science of computing, as well as to prepare students for career opportunities in this area requiring a high level of technical knowledge and skill. The Department will continue to develop and administer programs which serve the needs of industrial computer scientists, researchers, and computer application specialists for whom the discipline of computing sciences provides indispensable tools.

The mission is accomplished through an offering of major and minor programs, cooperative endeavors with other universities, articulation agreements with two-year colleges, ties with industry, and by advancing scholarship in the discipline.

• Our programs have a central core of requirements covering the fundamental areas of computing sciences.
• Our programs have co-requirements to assure that our graduates have thorough training in logical and critical reasoning needed for continuing intellectual growth.
• Our programs meet the needs of adult students with interest in skill enhancement for current jobs or retraining in the computing sciences.
• Our Department provides support to the general education and other academic programs in the College.
• Our Department engages in outreach activities that promote a spirit of cooperation between college and community.

Vision Statement

The vision of the Department is to become a recognized leader in Western New York offering high-quality undergraduate programs in computing sciences to a large number of talented students at affordable tuition rates.

Core Values

The core values guiding the Department are:

• Commitment to high-quality undergraduate education and student success.
• Commitment to widening educational opportunities to women and minority groups under-represented in the discipline.
• Quality assurance of academic programs through disciplinary accreditation.
• Continuous program improvement through assessment of program educational objectives and program outcomes.
• New initiatives and programs with changes in technology and global interdependence.
• Continued professional development of faculty members and scholarly contributions to the discipline, often with student participation.
• Articulation agreements with 2-year community colleges to permit seamless transfer of students.
• Activities to build ties to K-12 groups, community colleges, and local industry.
• Shared governance of departmental affairs.
• Service to the College, University, community, and discipline.

Goals

The current (2005-2010) goals of the Department are:

• Maintain CAC/ABET accreditation for the Advanced Computing (AC) Track of the major.
• Seek and maintain CAC/ABET accreditation for the Information Systems (IS) Track of the major.
• Obtain NSF S-STEM funding to provide scholarships for talented but financially disadvantaged students.
• Recruit and retain women and minority students under-represented in the discipline of computing.
• Pursue joint academic programs with Isik University, Istanbul, Turkey, under the SUNY-YÖK dual-diploma framework.
• Develop faculty expertise in emerging areas of computing sciences, such as data mining and mobile computing.
• Increase the departmental presence in the conferences of Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC).
• Support student presentations in the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research (NCUR).
• Conduct outreach workshops with sponsorship of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA).
• Review articulation agreements with Monroe and Genesee County community colleges.

We welcome comments on our mission, vision, core values, and goals. Contact Kad Lakshmanan, Department Chair, at klakshma@brockport.edu.