Minutes from CS Undergraduate Program Committee Meeting
Feb. 25 2003

This meeting was devoted to reviewing end-of-course memos
from Spring 2002 and Fall 2003.

High level issue:
Add two more questions to the standard form:
a) Do you have concerns regarding the background of students
coming into the course?
b) Do you have concerns regarding what students leaving the
course have learned or not learned? 

Reviews of memos:

a) In CS201, Cohoon noted that exception handling in C++ was
not covered. He assumed it was. It's not in the course specs.
Decision: consider this when updating CS201 to have better
content on realiability, testing.  (Horton and Milner will
do this over the summer.)

b) In CS202, one instructor reported that *half* of the
students could do an inductive proof successfully.  The
instructor seemed to think this was good, but the committee 
felt this was too low.  Those teaching CS216 and CS302 
noted that they don't see good proof skills in those later 
courses.  (Comment: our TAs can't do proofs!)  Perhaps 
there's too much material in CS202?  Could they do less 
and focus on doing more on proofs?

c) There was a general discussion (again) on whether 
students were getting enough design in the program, 
particularly in CS201 and CS216.