Case Studies of Liberal Arts Computer Science Programs

Abstract

Many undergraduate liberal arts institutions offer computer science majors. This article illustrates how quality computer science programs can be realized in a wide variety of liberal arts settings by describing and contrasting the actual programs at five liberal arts colleges: Williams College, Kalamazoo College, the State University of New York at Geneseo, Spelman College, and Calvin College. While the example programs differ in size, mission, and the nature of their home institutions, all take advantage of their liberal arts setting to offer rich computer science educations. Comparing these programs to each other and to the latest ACM/IEEE Computer Society computer science curriculum shows that the liberal arts programs are distinguishable from the ACM/Computer Society recommendations, but at the same time are strong undergraduate majors.