Graduates with a Master of Science in Computer Information Science will have a strong technical foundation in the computational sciences.

Students will develop and demonstrate knowledge of theoretical materials technical skills and project management relevant to computer information systems.

The final project in this degree program is a software engineering project that involves the students identifying a significant application development need for a selected client and the design and implementation of an appropriate software solution to that need. 

Each student is assigned to a member of the graduate faculty in computer science as project advisor together with two additional graduate faculty forming the student's committee.

The department has established procedures for managing projects including

1.  The presentation of project proposals within the first two weeks of the semester.  The graduate faculty review and approve or disapprove each proposal. 

2. Weekly progress meetings with the project advisor.

3. The evaluation by the complete graduate faculty of each student's progress at midterm.

4. The distribution of project activity to the remaining members of each committee.

At the end of the project each student prepares and runs a formal presentation including a description of the project, detailed explanation of the solution used and a demonstration of the completed application.

 

Students graduating will have documented consensus of the graduate faculty that they meet professional standards of software engineering.

16 computing and information science students presented their final projects in the 2012-2013 cycle, 8 in Fall and 8 in Spring. 15 of themsuccessfully defended their projects (93.75%). For students who passed their final presentation defense, their supervisor and committee member all agreed that their project documentation have met professional standard in project design, documentation, implementation, and presentation. One of the 16 student was not able to clearly answer some of the questions raised by committee members, and was given a second chance to complete project and redo final presentation in Fall 2013.

Each student is required to take and pass the written comprehensive examination (WCE) in the graduating semester. Passing grade is defined as scoring 70 or above out of 100, and high pass grade is defined as scoring 85 or above out of 100. Graduate faculty who teach the current 5 core courses of computing and information science are responsible to design exam questions. Each student is given one hour on each of the 5 subjects:

1. Database Systems
2. Programming Languages
3. Data Structures
4. Operating Systems
5. Software Engineering

Faculty who gave the exam questions are responsible to grade and report grades of these exams. 

Graduate faculty who gave the exam questions are responsible for grading and reporting the grades to graduate advisor. Each exam score should be numeric number between 0 and 100, so that a fail (69 or below), pass (70-84), or high pass (85-100) can be determined.

In Fall 2012, 11 students took WCE. All other students passed all subjects, except one student failed three subjects (also see report section for Spring 2013)), one failed three subjects and passed them all in retakes, and one failed in a single subject and passed in retake. In Spring 2013, 7 students took WCE. One of the seven was retaking exams and failed again in 3 areas and was terminated. Four students failed on a single subject and all passed in retakes. Another one student failed in two subjects and failed one again in retake. The GCC decided to give this student another chance in Fall 2013 by taking a special topic course on the failed subject and pass the exam in Fall 2013.

In general the Graduate Curriculum committee was satisfied with the results of the evaluation of students acquisition of theoretical computational and technical skills through the capstone assessment system in place.The graduate faculty has agreed that the last oral exams were given in Fall 2012 and starting Spring 2013 Written Comprehenisve Exams are given.In general the Graduate Curriculum committee (GCC) was satisfied with the results of the evaluation of students acquisition of theoretical computational and technical skills through the capstone assessment system in place.The GCC consider that it is vitally important to emphasize the necessity and importance of WCE as they not only strengthen the technical background of the students, but also are very helpful in preparing students for job interviews and future career.