Impact on Retention from a Change In Undergraduate Computing Curricula
Donna S. Reese, T. J. Jankun-Kelly, Lisa Henderson, Sarah B. Lee · 2013
Mississippi State University (MSU), like many other institutions across the country, has seen a significant decline in the number of computing majors since the early 2000's when the dot com crash caused many students to shy away from majors involving computing. In addition, the diversity of the students who have remained in the field has decreased, particularly with female students making up a smaller and smaller percentage of majors in these fields. In the 2008-09 year a significant effort was made to re-design the introductory programming sequence in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. This introductory programming sequence is taken by students in computer science, software engineering, computer engineering and electrical engineering. In addition, an introductory CSE course was added for computer science and software engineering majors. Data shows that this redesign has had a positive impact on the retention of students within the majors served by this sequence.