Spring 2000 State of School Address

1
Outlook for Computer Sciencepresented byJohn
K. AntonioSchool of Computer ScienceUniversity
of OklahomaFall 2000 CS BoV Meeting October 27,
2000
2
Outline

• Accomplishments During AY 99-00
• Strategic Plan Implementation
• Current and Future Challenges for Computer
  Science as a Discipline

3
Accomplishments During 99-00

• Development of CS Strategic Plan high
  faculty involvement
• Re-establishment of CS BoV energetic
  board
• High proposal activity
• Filled new associate professor position in
  networking/telecommunications
• High faculty/staff morale
• Good collaboration with IE

4
Accomplishments During 99-00

• New joint/adjunct appointments AME,
  CAPS, Zoology
• Development of BS/MS dual degree programs
  CS/CS, CmpE/CS, Math/CS
• Revision/Update of CS Curriculum
• Significant outreach, learning, and meeting with
  constituents
• Design and implementation of new CS web pages

5
Strategic Plan Implementation

• Strategy 1 Innovation in Education
• Beyond Paper Project
• Course on a CD Project
• ? Unclear motivation, demand, and/or niche for
  distance education programs
• ? Unclear faculty motivation/reward structure
• ? Unclear administrative motivation/reward
  structure

6
Strategic Plan Implementation

• Strategy 2 Excellent Research Program
  Inclusion of Technology Creation
• Significant increase in research
  expenditures FY 98-99 498,465 with 9
  FTE FY 99-00 884,987 with 11 FTE
• Average No. FTE for CS Departments ranked 1-12
  31.8
• Average No. FTE for CS Departments ranked 13-24
  26.7
• Expenditures/FTE for CS Departments ranked 1-12
  187K
• Expenditures/FTE for CS Departments ranked
  13-24 287K
• ? Unclear faculty motivation/reward structure for
  technology creation activities

7
Strategic Plan Implementation

• Strategy 3 Production of Excellent Graduates
• CS students are among the highest in merit
  credentials
• CS students are highly recruited by industry
• ? CS graduates often do not find/create
  employment in OK

8
Strategic Plan Implementation

• Strategy 4 Support Vision of Sarkeys
• Providing newly developed CS course primarily
  for programs in college of geosciences
• Some collaborative research with geosciences

9
Current and Future Challenges for Computer
Science as a Discipline

• The Computing Discipline is Broadening, Rapidly
• Artificial intelligence Human-computer
  interaction Network engineering Bioinformatics
  Information science Performance analysis
  Cognitive science Information systems
  Scientific computing Computational science
  Instructional design Software architecture
  Computer science Knowledge engineering Software
  engineering Database engineering Learning
  theory System administration Digital library
  science Management information systems System
  security and privacy Graphics1
• Today, computing is an integral part of many
  academic fields, ranging from business
  management to molecular biology2

1 Peter J. Denning. Our seed corn is growing in
the commons. Information Impacts Magazine,
March 1999. 2 Computing Curricula 2001, Joint
undertaking of the IEEE Computer Society and the
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
http//www.computer.org/education/cc2001/report/
10
Current and Future Challenges for Computer
Science as a Discipline
Computing Curricula Body of Knowledge in 1991 and
20012
2001 1. Discrete Structures 2. Programming
Fundamentals 3. Algorithms and Complexity 4.
Programming Languages 5. Architecture 6.
Operating Systems 7. Human-Computer Interaction
8. Graphics, Visualization, and Multimedia 9.
Intelligent Systems 10. Information
Management 11. Net-Centric Computing 12.
Software Engineering 13. Computational Science
14. Social, Ethical, and Professional Issues
1991 1. Algorithms and Data Structures 2.
Architecture Methods 3. Artificial Intelligence
and Robotics 4. Database and Information
Retrieval 5. Human-Computer Communication 6.
Numerical and Symbolic Computation 7. Operating
Systems 8. Programming Languages 9. Software
Methodology and Engineering
11
Current and Future Challenges for Computer
Science as a Discipline

• Some Research Areas in CS have Revolutionary
  Potential
• Software Engineering
• Human Computer Interfaces
• Embedded Computing

12
Current and Future Challenges for Computer
Science as a Discipline

• Some Predictions
• As Distributed Virtual Reality becomes a
  reality, the time constant associated with
  rankings of academic institutions will decrease
  dramatically
• All CoE disciplines will be increasingly
  challenged to define broader scopes and new and
  appropriate levels of abstraction, or risk
  becoming a commodity discipline
• In the near future, the CS discipline will
  either
• split into left brain / right brain
  sub-disciplines
• follow the history of Mathematics
• do something else!