[Silicon] valley is populated with people of various talents, but its essence begins with the software and hardware engineers. They create technology tools that then find investors and users in the marketplace..... That fundamental truth was forgotten in the boom years. The short-lived dot-coms were just marketing plans lashed to the Internet. They had no technology edge; they were run by marketers and M.B.A.'s. But most of the young companies that survived the crash - and the start-ups that have risen since - are based on innovation and are run by people with deep technical skills.

--New York Times, October 2003.

Employment in information technology (IT) comprises five of the top ten salary jobs in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast of the 30 fastest growing jobs through 2014.  Almost all of these jobs are in the areas of software engineering and systems analysis.  Money magazine has rated software development and systems analysis as one of the Top Ten Best Jobs to hold, rating it highly for creativity, pay and flexibility.  High level positions in these information technology fields require a high skills set for job entry.  Stevens’ undergraduate programs in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Information Systems and Service Oriented Computing provide a world-class grounding in this skills set.

• Computer Science offers the flexibility for students to "drill down" to specific subject areas, such as graphics, computer games, software engineering, networks, financial computing, and enterprise computing.
• Cybersecurity focuses on the technical and managerial aspects of securing the nation's IT infrastructure.  In addition to a strong Computer Science background, it provides in-depth studies in cryptography, privacy and building secure systems.
• Information Systems emphasizes the organizational issues of managing information, covering management skills as well as IT skills.  Both information management and project management are strong themes of the program.
• Service Oriented Computing focuses on applications of computer science and information technology. It combines front-end client facing skills such as requirements acquisition and human computer interaction with skills in concurrent and distributed programming. The major also requires specialization in an approved application domain.

All of these programs share a strong technical "spine" and a two-semester senior project course that emphasizes client interaction and project management.

The Future IT Professional

The U.S. faces a growing shortage of skills in information technology in general, and in high-end software development and systems analysis in particular.  This is due both to a burgeoning demand for IT jobs, and a drop in the number of IT graduates due to popular misconceptions of outsourcing of information technology jobs to low-wage countries.  The extent of outsourcing has been greatly exaggerated in the popular media, with recent studies showing that the forms of jobs being outsourced are relatively low-level routine programming, testing and IT support jobs.  In fact, the cost savings from low-end information technology off-shoring are enabling greater investment in forms of information technology that require higher-end IT professionals.  Large sectors of the US economy have surprisingly low rates of information technology investment.  As the cost of low-end services declines, the U.S. economy is seeing growing investment in information technology, leading in turn to a greater demand for high-end IT services.

The Stevens' undergraduate majors in Computer Science, Cybersecurity and Information Systems are specifically designed to train the high-end IT professionals who can take advantage of these trends, and gain entry into a challenging and rewarding career path in software development and systems analysis.  It is widely recognized that the most important skills in software development and systems analysis combine a strong background in information technology, particularly creativity and problem-solving, with personal and business skills such as customer-client interaction, business case considerations, and project management.  The three majors emphasize both a strong grounding in IT, and the development of the business abilities required of a modern IT professional.  Stevens is one of the few programs in the country to require a two-semester senior project course that emphasizes these skills.

Structure of the Majors

The “spine” of the majors is a two-year sequence of courses developing basic software engineering skills, including algorithmic problem-solving, design, coding and testing.  This is supplemented by a mathematical sequence including discrete mathematics, probability and statistics.  This sequence provides both rigor and the mathematical maturity that the modern IT professional is expected to be able to draw upon.  Subsequent courses build on this spine to provide a background in advanced concepts relevant to the major.

A senior-year two-semester capstone senior project course teaches the principles and theory of programming-in-the-large, including teamwork, problem solving, and “agile” software development methods in the context of two projects.  The course is modeled on business software development practices, so that students experience a transition from academia to business. Students produce useful, well-engineered software products, applying software engineering techniques, ethical principles and generally accepted software practices.  Many projects are sponsored by companies or government agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Siemens, Citicorp and Johnson & Johnson.  Cybersecurity majors choose a project with an emphasis on computer systems security.  Information systems majors choose a project with a specific information management emphasis.

The majors share a common freshman year, and share much in common in their sophomore years as well. The freshman and sophomore years for all majors in the computer science department include:

• The "spine" of software development courses that develop basic problem-solving skills.
• Mathematical skills including calculus, discrete mathematics, and probability and statistics.
• Web fundamentals, including protocol stacks and information architecture.
• Software engineering, including basic process skills such as client facing and project management, as well as security engineering as applied risk management in the software development process.

Between the spine that develops problem-solving skills and the senior year project course, each major "pivots" on a fundamental course that is at the heart of that specific major.

• For computer science, the pivot course is the operating systems course.
• For cybersecurity, the pivot course is the secure systems course.
• For information systems, the pivot course is the database systems course.
• For service oriented computing, the pivot course is the distributed systems course.

Stevens Computer Science is also the home to world-class research in areas such as computer security, computer graphics, vision and visualization, software engineering and networks.  The quality of this research is demonstrated by the publication and funding records of the faculty of the department.  Stevens undergraduate students are encouraged to get involved with faculty in their research.  Indeed, while graduate students come from all over the world to be involved with Stevens research, some Stevens undergraduates choose to stay at Stevens for their graduate work, pursuing Ph.D. research with the faculty they came to know during their undergraduate studies.