CS2013-final-report

• Biocomputation
• Unspecialized (this track provides extensive breadth rather than depth)
The additional CS elective courses that students may choose come from a list of over 50 upper
division courses offered in the CS department. Also, each track area provides a list of “track
electives” which are additional choices for elective courses specific to that track area, and may
include relevant courses from outside CS. For example, the Artificial Intelligence track-specific
elective course list includes classes from both the Psychology and Statistics departments.
Additionally, all CS undergraduates are required to take a capstone course (Senior Project) as
well as a course in the area of “Science, Technology, and Society”. While students have several
options for the latter requirement, the vast majority of students complete this requirement by
taking a course taught in the CS department entitled “Computers, Ethics, and Public Policy”.
Curricular Analysis
While the multitude of options through our CS major makes it impossible to map all the paths
through our curriculum, we consider below a very typical (and minimal) program though our
undergraduate program. In this program, a student begins in CS106A (our CS1 class), completes
the CS “core” and chooses the “Systems” track—one of the most popular undergraduate tracks
at Stanford—for the depth area. The additional CS electives in this exemplar program represent
a minimal set of courses used to satisfy the elective requirement, sampled from among the most
popular elective courses that were not already part of the student’s program. Finally, the
program includes the required senior capstone course and a course satisfying the “Science,
Technology, and Society” requirement. The program is composed of the specific courses listed
below. Note that we do not include the additional mathematics and science courses required as a
result of our major being housed in the School of Engineering since these courses do not include
CS-specific content.
Background (CS1)
• CS 106A – Programming Methodology
CS Core
• CS103 – Mathematical Foundations of Computing
• CS106B – Programming Abstractions
• CS107 – Computer Organization and Systems
• CS109 – Introduction to Probability for Computer Scientists
• CS110 – Principles of Computer Systems
• CS161 – Design and Analysis of Algorithms
Systems Track
• CS140 – Operating Systems and Systems Programming
• CS144 – Introduction to Computer Networking
• CS145 – Introduction to Databases
• EE108B – Digital Systems II
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