The CS Department strongly supports the goals of the CS for All national effort announced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), led by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) in partnership with other federal agencies and private partners, to ensure Computer Science (CS) education is available to all students across the U.S.
Some of our efforts towards CS for All are listed below:
- CS 100
The department has created a new course CS 100 - Principles of Computing that focuses on the fundamental concepts of computing, including programming but also creativity, algorithms, data, abstraction, problem solving, networking, and societal impacts. CS 100 can be used to fulfill the Mason Core IT requirement. The department also gives credit for the AP CS Principles course.
Find out more about CS 100 - Courses on Computer Programming open to non-majors
In addition to CS 100 (which is open to all Mason students), the department offers several courses that can be taken by non-majors with the approriate prerequisites:- CS 112 - Introduction to Computer Programming This course is a first course in computer programming that can be used to fulfill the Mason Core IT requirement. The language used in the class is Python.
- SWE 510 - Object-oriented Programming in Java This course can be taken by graduate students without a CS academic background who wish to learn object-oriented programming.
- Minors
The department offers two minors (in Computer Science and Software Engineering) for non-CS majors at Mason who are interested in taking additional courses in computing - Masters programs
The MS programs offered by the department, specifically the MS in Information Systems, the MS in Information Security and Assurance, and the MS in Software Engineering admit students from a wide variety of academic backgrounds. Find out more at the web pages for prospective MS students.