EMPORIA STATE RESEARCH STUDIES Vol. 53, no. 1, p. 55 – 63 (2022) _____________________________________________________________________________________
Transitioning Computer Science major from the Mathematics Department to an Information Systems Department – Reasoning, Administrative Process and Curriculum changes GEETHALAKSHMI SHIVANAPURA LAKSHMIKANTHa, LIZ DIERSa AND LIDAN FANb a) Accounting, Information Systems and Finance Department, School of Business, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS 66801 (glakshmi@emporia.edu and ldiers@emporia.edu ) b) School of Business, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 (lidan.fan@ku.edu )
______________________________________________ Incoming students may be confused to encounter the Computer Science (CS) major offered within different departments at different universities. It is found that the CS program is most frequently either in the School of Liberal Arts, sciences and Mathematics, or School of Engineering (specifically Electrical Engineering and computer science), or in the Dept. of Information Systems (IS) of School of Business. Graduating high school students find it often confusing to comprehend the difference in curriculum when the CS program is listed as a part of the Mathematics Dept. v/s an IS Dept within the same school. Scientific literature and studies have shown the advantages of having a CS program in an IS Department and the estranged relationship with the Mathematics Department. This paper explores the reasoning behind the transition of the CS program from the Mathematics Dept.to the IS Dept. of an AACSB accredited School of Business, of a Mid-west region, State University, with detailed description of the administrative process and the curriculum changes brought about from this transition. The information in this paper serves as a template for other universities that are working on a similar transition or contemplating the process with little (or incomplete) information at their disposal. Keywords: computer science, program transition, computer science and math, information systems, administrative process, state university program, computer science and business school.
INTRODUCTION The term ‘Computer Science’ was coined way back in 1952 (Tedre 2014) as the science of computing, but only appeared in an ACM article (Fine 1959) in 1959. The addition of the term, ‘Science’ was much under debate during the early 60s as scientists believed that Computer Science was not about the science of computers (Matti 2006). In (Fine 1959) Louis Fein argued that it was vital to start Computer science as an academic program, much like Harvard starting a program in Management sciences, in 1921. The work of Louis Fein along with George Forsyth made this proposal come into action with universities deciding to add an academic degree program in Computer science. Purdue University in the US was the first University to add the Computer Science program, way back in 1962 (Knuth 1972). Since its inception there has been a lot of debate on the different terms used to describe this newly formed field of science, Computing science, computer engineering, software engineering, data science, data logy (Naur 1966) and Procedural Epistemology,
where understanding the role of knowledge, belief, and action play an important role in both CS and Economics (Tedre 2011). Another area of debate was the distinction between the various multi-disciplinary fields that are closely related. For example, Computer Science was more focused on understanding the concepts of logic, algorithms, and computing in general (Denning 1999), whereas Computer engineering was focused on the hardware components used in the field of computing. Information science and information technology are defined as the terms that involve the study of commercial computing systems in a practical setting that revolves around information collection, storage, and computation. The next process in line to achieve the introduction of a CS program was to finalize the existing discipline that is more closely related to this new field of ‘Computer Science’. It was proven that the algorithmic focus of CS and logic building is more closely related to the mathematical sciences (Denning 1999) than any other existing field in academia.