Department of Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Overview

Hi Steve.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can you hear me, Dan?

OK, I forgot it video.

What's that?

I forgot to hit after hit the broadcast video.

Oh OK, got it. Um, did you see that Carl sent an email This morning that he's teaching until the last minute so he's gonna jump in when he can.

Right, yeah yeah, yeah.

Right, yeah yeah, yeah.

I saw he said the one about maybe I didn't notice that part about update Google Docs.

There is.

Oh

Yeah, I saw the email too.

Yeah, I saw the email too.

Google Sheets.

Yeah, it's underneath the Google sheet text. Um 1150. Oh my gosh Carol please please.

Now.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

So do we keep our so for the video do I leave myself up for the whole time or do we take ourselves down so they could do the presentations were not distracting? Or how is it been done in the past?

I would at the very least I would. I would unclick broadcast video so that you don't feel like while Carles presenting for whatever twenty 3040 minutes, you don't feel like you're in a fishbowl the whole time.

OK.

And then at the end, if he has questions, you can broadcast video and share with him some common questions that came up during chat. Are this and this? Does that make sense?

Yes.

OK.

So I don't. I remember you telling us in the training we don't just click mute video and mute audio.

Don't don't, because that leaves a black box that then blocks the slides in the recording.

Yes, so I had broadcast video to mute myself that.

Yeah, got it.

Hello.

Who?

Hi Yes.

OK.

Can you hear Maine?

Can you hear Maine?

Hello.

Hello.

Shannon

Carol, are you there?

Shannon

Shannon, can you hear me?

Shannon, can you hear me?

This is Steve.

This is Steve.

Morrow

Can anyone hear me?

Can anyone hear me?

Hello.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Yes.

Hello.

Hello.

Can anyone hear me?

Can anyone hear me?

Dan.

Yes.

Hello.

Hello.

Who?

Oh

Oh

Hello can anyone hear me?

Hello can anyone hear me?

Hello can I don't hear me.

Hello can I don't hear me.

Welcome everyone, we're gonna get started just in another minute or two.

Hello can you hear me?

Perfect.

Thank you.

No for joining us.

Oh finally, I was I was in there for like 5 minutes.

Right?

So if Professor Co if you hit the control slides button, you'll be in control of the presentation.

Right?

If you got it.

Alright, Yeah I did it. Let me see if I can actually control it.

Sure can.

Do you see the transition?

Yes.

OK, I hear the echo actually.

OK.

All right?

All right?

Can everyone see that slide transition I'm? I'm a moving.

Yes.

Yes.

Open my control OK good.

All right, sure we get started then.

Sounds good, I'm going to closeout my video so that it doesn't walk the slides.

Alright, sounds good.

Hello everybody.

I hope everyone is doing well.

I can see the chat. OK, yeah, if you want to say, say anything, just leave a chat will be able to look at it and if it is a question then will be able to catch it. Answer it because there are many people I think I see like over 200 people right now. It's over 100 people, yeah?

So if your if your question doesn't get answered right away, then after the seminar after the webinar will be downloading the chat messages and then will be going over the messages. So after that will be able to answer the questions so please bear with us. This is, you know this is new to us as well. Typically we do this in a face face to face setting.

But we're doing it virtually today, but I hope this is useful for everybody.

Before we get started, I'd like to introduce myself and my colleagues.

Uh, my name is Steve Cole. I am an associate professor.

In the Department of computer science and engineering at UBIB and add you before, I think about 10 years.

And I am currently a Co director of undergraduate studies.

And I have my colleague here, uhm?

Doctor Alfons, do you want to introduce yourself?

Sure, yeah. Hi everyone. My name is Carla fonts. I'm Co director of undergraduate studies together with Professor Cole.

And, Uh, I'm in associate professor of teaching, so I'm primarily focused on teaching undergraduate classes, and I've been here for a little over 20 years by now. Back to you, Steve.

All right, uhm, we actually have other people as well. Joining us. Does anyone want to introduce yourself Shelly Channel?

Um?

Well.

Daniel yeah.

Hi.

Hi my name is Dan larose I work in the office of undergrad education here in engineering So what are office does is we support you throughout your 4 years with the basement and help with any aspect you need so feel free to in the chat to ask any questions thank you.

All right?

Channel

Oh, I guess your audio is not active.

Yeah, yeah.

How about now? Can you hear me other this? OK, alright, um I everyone so my name is Chanel I'm a computer engineering senior here at you be I'm the current share of the undergraduate student Advisory Board and what that is. It's essentially the representatives of for the Department, so yeah.

Great, thank you.

And Jelly.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Hang on, I'm high I'm shelling Neumeier. I'm the undergrad coordinator for the computer science and Engineering Department. So if you have any questions, please ask. Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, so we're going to get started with our presentation 1st and after that we're going to have some Q&A session together.

So I hope you are not mistaken. This is a computer science and engineering webinars, so we'll be talking about our programs.

We offer two programs. One is computer engineering, the other is computer science, and we'll be talking about both programs.

And first of all, welcome and congratulations, I hope you actually join you. Be an join computer science and engineering. This will be a great opportunity for you and a great opportunity for us as well.

Um?

What we want to talk about today is your academic experience, how it's going to look like in the next 4 years if you join you beat.

And.

Will be talking about academics, uhm?

This likes actually looks different. Maybe the conversion didn't work quite well actually, so it converted from PowerPoint to PDF. I guess it didn't work quite well. The system didn't accept PowerPoint because the sizes too large, so we have to convert it to a PDF, but yeah.

All right?

Anyways, so we'll be talking about academics. What you're going to want your coursework will be.

And then we'll also talk about other aspects.

Of student life.

OK, so.

Yeah, this yeah slice doesn't really look good. Yeah OK, So what we wanted to say here is that you're going to have a lot of exams. Alot of course work and a lot of quizzes. And of course that's true. But there is more than just taking courses and taking exams and quizzes and doing homework, so that's what we wanted to talk about.

Send this PPT in an email afterwards in the chat. Yes, that's a great question. Will be doing that? Yes, yeah.

Alright, so uh, So what I'm going to do is, uh, is that I'm going to talk about coursework than other aspects at the same time, and we're going to start with your first freshman year.

I went back a sliding. Can't get to the slide we're on OK yeah. I mean if you cannot see the slides just let us know I guess refreshing your page could actually help.

So I'll continue talking about are your freshman year potential freshman year?

So we are showing on this slide here. Both programs, computer engineering and computer science.

In the freshman year, you'll be taking most of the required courses, and these courses include especially from the computer science and engineering side intro to programming courses and math courses.

And, uh, there is a freshman seminar course that you need to take. That's a requirement from UV as well. So every freshman as you be will be taking a freshman seminar. An in computer science and engineering. We offer one ourselves, and there are other department's who offer that as well.

For the intro level programming courses, the first CS one is CSC 1:15, that is, intro to programming one and will be teaching Python And JavaScript.

And the second intro to programming will be Python And Scala.

So those are the languages that you're going to learn in your first year. That's true for both computer engineering and computer science.

And there are math courses that you will need to take.

For a computer engineering, it's going to be calculus. For computer science, it's going to be calculus and discrete structures, and those are typical math courses that you take.

In any school.

OK, so that's going to be your coursework in your freshman year.

But it's not just that.

You will be able to do other things in your freshman year as well an.

We want especially highlight some of the student clubs that you can join.

As freshmen.

So I'll be talking about a few um student clubs.

And, uh, it's not so. I'm just, you know, talking about the examples. There are a lot more student clubs then just the clubs that I'm going to talk about.

So if you come to campus and you know join newbie, then you'll be able to explore your options.

So the first club that I want to highlight is you be ACM. ACM is am stands for Association for computing machinery.

And this is actually an international organization and we have a student chapter at you be.

An it's a student is a student run club an it's a community of student hackers, hackers meaning you know, you know programmers build errors, so community of student hackers and they run various events and they organize various things.

Some of these are the some of the things that they do. They organize something called hack nights, an hackathons. Hack nights are just, you know, gathering of people and they gather together and they work on projects together. So that's heck nights.

And they also organize technomic tech talks and workshops and social events. So if you join this club then you'll be able to meet with a lot of people and do projects together. Go to different talks and workshops so that is 1 club.

The other club that I want to highlight is called. You be hacking and this is a student run club that organizes an an annual hackathon.

And a hackathon is basically a an event.

In our case you be hacking is an annual hackathon.

That is a 24 hour event, and during those 24 hours students get together and work on projects together like hardware and software projects. And during that time companies join as well, so they try to meet with our students so that they can actually recruit them.

And we also have free food and the entire organization is done by students, and this is done in our building. Davis. All I don't know if anyone has seen the building, but it's it's, uh, you know. I guess quite new building.

And it's a nice building, and typically there are, like you know, 300 students. 400 students come into the building and spend 24 hours together to work on projects, so it's a very exciting event. It's an annual event.

And here are some of the examples for the project, like VR games, and you know, social networking applications and some hardware projects as well.

And we have a lot of sponsors for that for Hackathon, so we have, like NT Bank, Twilio, Wegmans, Facebook, Google, Bloomberg, Kubrick, and ACV auctions. These are all companies who sponsor our event.

So that's another club. The third club that we want to highlight is you be Dave tag.

And this club is basically the mission is empowering underrepresented demographics majoring in computer science and engineering. And so they organize various events and workshops and also tech talks.

So these are some of the I guess previous members.

And they go to conferences together. For example, there's a conference called Grace Hopper celebration for women in computing, and so they.

Annually they go to this conference together.

And they have like welcome bag events for every semester and they organize various tech talks like Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. So this is another great club that you can consider joining.

I think this is the last clip that last club that I want to highlight, which is invest.

And the invest is a combination of two words. One is invent.

And the other is invest.

So the combination of those two words.

Invest.

So they, uh.

They basically have like project idea, Bank of project ideas and people come together and they work on various projects.

This club is, I guess the focus is, at least in the beginning now. I think the focus has been diverse, diversified, but at least in the beginning the focus was Finn tax. So financial technologies.

And so they, uh, organize different workshops and they have project ideas related to especially financial technology.

So that's the last Co op that I wanted to highlight. Their armor clubs that you can join and not only within our Department. There are University wide, many different clubs, so as you explore as a freshman, you might want to consider joining other clubs.

OK.

Alright, so.

After the first year there will be a summer and during the summer you can do many things.

And there is something called REU that is research experience for undergraduates.

And even as a as a freshman, there are some faculty members who can actually offer you research opportunities. So if you you know if you ask around, you might be able to find the opportunity even as a freshman.

And there are internships or other summer jobs that you can do an we offer summer courses as well. So if you want to retake some of the courses or if you want to get ahead, then you can take summer courses as well.

So that's going to be freshman year in the cellphone warrior. We have more required courses that you need to take and the few courses that I want to highlight. Our CSC 220 systems programming and CSC 250 data structures. The reason why I want to highlight those is because they are common for both computer engineering and computer science and they provide you with some foundation.

For the upper level courses.

So those two Proto two courses are considered to be very important.

For your programs.

So one is once again CSC 220 systems programming, the other is CSC 250 data structures. They are both theory and practice heavy practice, meaning programming.

So in order to succeed in both courses, you need to be good at both theory and programming.

So that's those are the things that I wanted to highlight from the South from the sophomore year and during your software here you can actually do more things. So there are two things that I want to highlight. One is uta that is under graduate teaching assistants and the other is a bee that is student Advisory Board. And if you remember channel who is with us now for this webinar.

She is the chair for essay be students student Advisory Board. So if you're interested, you can actually ask her some questions about Abe.

But I will.

You know, mention a few things about undergraduate TAS. NSA be so in our Department, undergraduate students can be teaching assistants.

So teaching assistants, they help the instructors to teach other students.

They lead lap sessions and they hold up office hours and they also run review sessions. An grade exams and also assist with existing examples administration.

So I think this semester we have close to 150 undergraduate TAS that we are hiring.

And they are helping instructors for various courses from the introductory courses to the upper level courses.

And this is actually a very good opportunity to get exposed to not just teaching, but like leadership opportunities, because you're going to run like review sessions. So we're going to stand up in front of your white board. And then you're going to be explaining things.

And you will be leading students to succeed, so it's going to be a good leader. Leadership opportunity, leadership experience, and also because because you're going to be teaching computer science courses.

It's going to be very helpful for your interview preparation, so if you go to industry, you have interviews.

And you have to go through the interviews to actually get a job and the interview process. They ask you to explain computer science concepts or solve problems.

And if you have some experience being an undergraduate t8, then you'll be basically doing that. You'll be teaching computer science concepts and you'll be solved in computer science problems in front of other people.

And so that's going to be a lot of great experience that you can get.

Even in terms of interview preparation.

OK, so that's one thing that I wanted to highlight.

And the other thing is student Advisory Board and the mission here is to better the Department by increasing undergraduate student engagement.

So they actually work with Co directors of undergraduate studies. And like I mentioned, I am one of 'em and Doctor Alphonse is another.

And so student Advisory Board. They work with us very closely to organize various outreach events and help the Department.

Um, they organize various events. 11 big event is called CSC Kids Day. So they organized this event. This is one day event and we invite local K12 students.

Kids and they come here come to our building and they experience various aspects of computers and computer science and engineering.

Channel do you want to add a few words about essay be?

Yeah, I can hear you, yeah.

Hello Oh, there it is.

OK.

Set up the microphone button. Uhm so yeah.

Yeah, I really great. So we represent the students of the undergraduate Department. We do a lot of feedback with them and we also do events like CS. I'd be Kids Day we had around. We had a couple of 100 kids at the building and it's really great 'cause you get to also see these students and what projects they're working on. We also host events for the students themselves like we have a new series called upbeat and what we do there is we let other students kind of talk about their experiences. So we have different topics like research or internships.

And stuff like that. We also talk about different scholarship opportunities and kind of try to create more of a network between students and also the faculty as well. We've even been doing that online this semester via zoom, and it's been great. It's been a great experience.

Thank you.

Yeah, Shannon Channel has been a great chair. Actually she's been, you know, organizing many different things and she's just great.

OK, so those are the two things that I wanted to highlight.

And after software there will be summer and during the summer you can do similar things like participating in undergraduate research or pursuing internships or taking summer courses.

Now, uh, from your junior year, you'll be taking more specialized courses. An upper level courses.

Um, for Computer Engineering? It's actually a little more structured, so there are still required courses that you need to take, such as CSA 321 embedded systems, CSC 341 computer organization, CSC 379 microprocessors.

And for CS you have a little more freedom in terms of selecting your own courses. So we have this breath requirement and depth requirement. Breath requirement is basically that you need to take one course from 4 areas.

And those four areas are AI.

AI meaning artificial intelligence, software hardware an uhm.

What's the last one?

Software.

What's that, Carl was the last one?

AI.

Yeah, I miss you learning.

Software hardware.

Theory.

Oh theory, yes. How can I forget that? Yes, so theory.

Yeah, yeah, don't take it as theory is not important. Theory is very important. I'm not a theory person, but theory is very important.

So yeah, those are the forward breath areas.

And you have to take one course in from all these areas. So in total four courses.

One from each. And then there's the depth requirement. You will choose one of the areas and take additional courses from that area.

So that is from this computer science side.

And as you can see, between the 300 level courses for Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Science, Computer Engineering will require you to take a little more hardware courses.

Uh, a little more hard work horses and for computer science you'll be taking more software courses, so there is actually a lot of overlap between the two programs. Computer science and Computer Engineering, but the focus is a little bit more on the hardware side for computer engineering, and the focus is a little bit more on the software side for computer science.

OK, and um, after your junior year during the summer, you know you can have more leadership experiences and personal projects and you can also have more opportunities through research and being a uta or joining other clubs.

So that's.

That's that.

And I'll be moving on to the senior year and in the theater here. I think one thing that I want to highlight is the capstone courses.

So during the senior year, you'll be taking a one or two capstone project courses, so capstone projects are basically project that can actually highlight your college career. So you do a semester long or maybe even a year year long project.

And then through that project you basically demonstrate what you have learned throughout your college career.

And so that is one thing that I want to highlight from the senior year.

And you will be. Also, you know you also be taking more technical electors that you choose.

And, uh, those those are going to be part of your curriculum.

OK, so I guess that's pretty much what I had for the four years of study and what we're going to do is to answer some of your questions.

And what you can do is that you can actually write a chat message and um.

I guess either.

Um?

Yeah, anyone who actually looks at the chat message, we can actually answer. If someone can actually point me or doctor, Alfons or channel or Shelly, we can actually directly answer those questions.

An actually channel, did you want to have a few words about your experience?

As a student at Yogi.

Sure, yeah, I cannot talk about that.

Alright, I'm gonna mute my cell.

OK sure thing.

Right, so high everyone so, uh, my name is Chanel. I'm a senior in Computer Engineering, Uhm?

So I can definitely say that I've had a positive experience here at you. Be especially with the help of the Department.

I think there's probably two really big things that have helped me.

Throughout my course of my undergrad career, the first one I'll say is that we have a really great on CS community from the students who are all really open and welcoming.

To the faculty as well, the faculty really strive their best to help you with the material, and there are also very approachable and friendly and they help you get opportunities. Which is the second thing I kind of wanted to mention is that there are a lot of opportunities here for you to kind of grow. I know I personally have had different experiences throughout the entire T of the four years I've done research both at my University within the Department. I've done research outside of the Department. I've done research at different universities as well.

With the help of some you be faculty that recommended me. I've done various internships here in Buffalo and also outside of Buffalo through the help of the UV career fair and also with the help of some alumni that kind of reach out in our Listserv and ask for interns. And I've also been a T as well. That's a teaching assistant, so I've been a teaching assistant for probably maybe four or five courses now.

And it's been a really positive experience just to kind of make that connection between students who are in there like.

Maybe freshman or sophomore year helping them with programming and stuff like that, so there's definitely a lot of opportunity here for you to grow. I personally started off at you be as a freshman. I had no programming experience at the start I really didn't know anything about computer science at all.

And yeah, I think I've grown a lot with the help of the department for sure, and I've kind of found my own personal specializations that I like. And yeah, I think that's kind of a summary of my experience that you be, and I'm more than welcome to answer any questions that you guys may have, whether it's about your freshman year or maybe like if you're thinking like how your whole experience will be. Since I am a senior, so I do have like kind of now an overview perspective of how.

The next four years will go so yeah.

OK, thank you very much.

So as I said before, if you have any questions, just leave a chat message and either someone will be able to answer you.

And if you have questions about channel specifically, you can also ask.

Regarding student experience or other other aspects.

So we have a question here um for professor code for data structures will kind of programming language is used.

So for data structure, we're using Scala so that we.

In the second intro programming course, we teach Python And Scala.

And that's the language that we're going to use.

For data structures as well.

OK and let's see here.

Quiet.

Another question for Steve are there specific courses in AI for natural language user interfaces.

Yeah I was gonna say actually I can take that one so we do have a course CC 467 which is introduction introduction to computational linguistics.

And so that would be a good starting point for studying to natural language user interfaces.

Yeah.

Let's see.

Do any courses in engineering involved 3 D printing or 3 D printers?

Right.

Right.

So I guess the answer there is that uh uh there are certainly courses that would use 3 D printing maybe building some parts for a project we don't have any courses specifically focused on 3 D printing if that's what you were asking.

Right I think in CSC we don't have.

A specific course that focuses on 3 D printing.

We do have a faculty member.

Who does research in 3 D printing?

He's more of a computer engineering faculty member and I know that in engineering we have a we have a lab that has many 3D printers.

So if you come here, you can actually use those.

Right that's a digital manufacturing lab and I'm trying to pull up the link to it.

Right.

Um here I'll put the link for the digital manufacturing lab in the chat.

There we go.

Are there yeah here's another question are there any compulsory minors for CS major there's no compulsory minor?

And here's another question what is the student to teacher rate.

Yeah I guess yeah you don't have to you know do any minor.

Sorry uh what is the student to teacher ratio in computer science classes.

So that varies quite a bit in both of the different course levels and different course components so in the introductory courses like CC 1:15 the lecture sections are fairly large we typically have run 200 students in a lecture section but then there are lab components which meeting groups of 2025 with 2 undergraduate TAS so there we have ratio of about 10 to 12 students bertier and we have recitation sections where there's 1.

TA for about 20 to 25.

Students once you get into the upper level courses the ratios might be very different we have for example one course that I'm teaching this semester it compilers class I have 18 students and so that's a very.

So cozy class if you will and I have an opportunity to really get to know all of the students.

So Steve maybe what are your experiences with that.

Yeah, I think I think that is true. It varies across different courses, so sometimes you have large courses, other times you have very small courses. So it really depends.

Yeah.

So here are 2 other questions can I get an internship in New York city over the summer absolutely I don't know about this summer how students are going to do because so many things are shut down or remote only but in general are students have internships in the Buffalo area throughout New York State New York City.

Boston DC area Seattle the Bay Area we've even had folks do internships in other locations leaving internationally.

Um.

And.

There have been a couple of questions that have come up about tuition costs beyond 12 credits and for minors and things like that once you are paying full time tuition so you're paying for 12 credits additional credits aren't charged so if you're taking 12 credits or 15 credits or 19 credits you're paying the same tuition.

Alright, Here is another question. If I were to pursue a certificate in another discipline.

Is it possible to handle the coursework of both and graduating 4 years or is it is the CS curriculum to rigorous to do much interdisciplinary study?

I think yes that's possible a lot of people actually do minor and double majors actually and you can definitely pursue a certificate you can even do a BA.

Instead of BS so in computer science we actually have 2 degrees one is CBSE see and the other is CS BA.

Those are similar but with CS BA you can actually have an extra outside concentration.

So you take some courses from another Department and then that becomes your outside concentration so you can even do that.

So there was a question here does you be have software engineering.

Uh we don't have a distinct software engineering program but we have courses in software engineering and many if not the majority of our computer science graduates end up in software engineering positions.

Here's another question what are the main focus research areas that we have in the CS Department like data science or human computer interaction or machine learning which one is the most popular now right now yeah so these are all research areas in computer science and computer engineering in our Department as well.

Hum I mean out of these 3 I would say machine learning is probably the most popular and then data science and then computer human computer interaction.

Um so out of those 3 that's probably you know how the popularity goes in general machine learning is very popular these days that everyone just wants to do use some form of machine learning AI.

In machine learning is you know solve area for AI.

Yeah.

Yes.

There is a question here about uh whether there are robotics themed clubs or activities.

Uhm yes there is a robotics club there's also an an asshat program that builds small satellites and put some in orbit there's a robotics minor that spans several departments in the school of engineering and we have several faculty doing research in robotics within computer science and engineering an we have courses in robotics as well so there's lots of opportunity to be engaged in and.

Explore further that area.

Here's another question, and I don't actually know the answer to this question. I've been accepted as an intended measure of computer science. It says after I have successfully completed prerequisite courses will be at immediate properly. What if I have high scores in SA, TS and helpful? do I still need to go through English courses before being admitted properly as an international student I guess?

Hi, I like to chime in about the emissions aspect so some some of you have been admitted intended. Some of you have been directly admitted, so if you directly admitted you're part of the computer science or computer engineering program and you take computer science, one computer science to Calc one your freshman year. If your intended, you're going to take those same exact courses.

In tennis students, you're part of the school of engineering. You will take computer science 115 one 16191 in California first year. Once you take those four courses, if you have a 2.5 GPA in those four, then the two point eight overall, which overall means all of your genotype courses. Any other course combine needs to be a 2.8, so a 2.5 in those four cores is 2.8. Then you'll be fully admitted.

Do the program so it isn't intended student. You are not going to be here longer. You are not taking additional courses are in the same track as an approved student. You just have to achieve those GPS while you're here for a transfer student. Same thing whether you taking those four courses at your old school or not. You would then be directly admitted. So if you took three of those courses at your old school, you need one more. You take that one more course that you be that you would be a minute.

For international students, as far as the English goes, it's based on your total score. So our international student office will place you if you into the English course at all students take or if you need some other additional English courses they might place you into that.

I hope that helps.

Then there was AA question about how students would know whether they were direct or intended admits.

So you were, you did get a letter from the school, you're admitted to you. Be by the admissions office. Then you did get a letter from the school of engineering that stated if you were intended or approved. So if you're really unsure, you could always just call the admissions office or the undergraduate education office, and we can let you know if you were intended or approved.

Thank you.

So I think this is a good question for channel. Actually. Any suggestions you would like to give us before coming to you be as a CS student or I guess, CSE student.

Yeah, sure, so I think it would be useful if you, uh, maybe try to learn Python. Just some basics. I wouldn't say it's like a hard requirement, since when I came into UV I again didn't have any programming experience. Another thing that might be really useful is brush up on some calculus one. Some basic science courses, just brush up on the material you already know.

I think those would be really helpful, as in preparation for your first semester in terms of course work.

Great, thank you.

OK, here's another question. What are some most popular courses that CS students have taken?

Uhm, I mean intercourse is, you know everybody has to take those, so those are pretty popular.

In terms of theory courses too, they are pretty popular.

Yeah, other than those. What are the?

Car Carl, do you know like I don't know?

Machine learning courses are popular.

What are the other popular courses? I mean, machine learning courses are popular to actually. Yeah, because machine learning in general. Yeah.

Right?

Right, right, right.

The I know that the computer security courses popular the.

The uh.

321 the the.

Embedded systems.

Embedded systems is popular. The database courses can be popular.

Uhm, yeah.

They're different courses are going to be popular for different subpopulations of students, and we have a lot of students so that we see.

Right?

A fairly, uh, a good engagement with lots of our different elective courses. So the one that I mentioned the compiler of course, which is relatively small, is fairly specialized, so there aren't as many students in there.

I teach at another course.

I called a software quality in practice which has.

Well, it well, whatever limit we've said it at, its met that limits. We have about 50 students in there this semester and we might try to increase the capacity of that course going forward.

Uh, we have a Web Development Course. Jesse's new course that.

Uh is popular as well, so.

Yeah, it it's it's hard to say uh, to pick out some courses as popular and sometimes not popular because all of our courses end up being ball subscribed.

Right?

Here's another question. What other programming languages are taught other than Python And JavaScript? So yeah, so 115, that's the intro to programming one CS one that is Python And JavaScript CSS, two intro, two that is Python And Scala.

And, uh, in a 220 systems programming we use C.

And other courses might use different languages. For example, my course is a distributed systems course that's at the 400 level senior level and he uses Java and I don't necessarily actually teach Java, so I expect students to kind of pick up.

Java by themselves and by by junior year or senior year you'll you know will be exposed to enough languages so that you can actually pick up other languages by yourself.

And that's, uh, I guess one of the goals that we have in our programs.

So you know, we give enough. We show you know if differences and similarities across different languages, so you can actually pick up a new language when when it is necessary.

All right, any other?

So there was another question about the combined be SMS program and.

It was while back in the history now but it stuck in my mind. The question was do we recommend it of Course.

So the be SMS program is a program that you would apply for.

Towards the end of your sophomore year, or between software in junior year, the DSM is program.

Let you complete both the BS program and the Ms programming computer signs in about five years.

Rather than 4 + 2 years, which is what it would typically take.

And so it's not nothing that you would need to worry about right now. Coming in as a as a freshman student, but once you've taken up the courses up through the data structure score CC-250 you would apply.

You would need some recommendation letters from faculty in the Department and you need to have at least a 3 three GPA. But then what happens is once you've taken the core required courses for the undergraduate program, you would take your elective courses as graduate courses instead of undergraduate courses.

Um?

And if you have more questions about that, certainly once you're here. And if you want to sit down and chat, we can do that and explore any more specific questions that you might have.

Here's another question I think. Actually, Carl, you might be able to enter this. What hardware do we need? I have.

Uh Oh yeah, what hardware do we need? I have a low end Debian laptop at the moment. I think you had a good um.

Like idea about what kind of hardware students typically need.

Yeah, so um, my this is my general advice. And uh, maybe Steven Channel. You'll have different advice to give. I say within your budget.

Get the most ram that you can afford that in my experience has been the primary limiting factor to how long I could use a laptop by current laptop is 7 years old now and when I bought it I maxed out the memory to 16 gig and at this point I would say that's probably the minimum that you want to get in a laptop if you want it to last for years now if you already have a laptop and it's less memory.

That's fine, it will get you started, but overtime software, products and operating systems to tend to expect more and more memory.

Once you have maxed out on the amount of ram that you can get, try to get the fastest processor that your budget will allow.

And then, uh.

Try to make sure that you get an SD drive. Now. I think most laptops these days have the SD drives rather than the spinning disk drives.

And after that is personal preference. I tend to like slightly larger screens. Some people really like the smaller screens and lighter laptops.

But those would be the things that I would prioritize.

Channel, do you have anything to add to that?

Sure Yeah, at least for me. Um, in my freshman year up to my junior year, I was using my Mac. I had an old Mac book. I think it was only like 8 gig 128 disk space. That worked fine. It was a bit uhm, I guess. Used a lot so I would recommend having.

I mean, if it's possible to try to have also like a windows environment that can run virtual machines, so you would need probably 8 to 16 gig I think would be a safe bet at least maybe half a TB of space. This is kind of if you're looking for the whole four years right since you'll be doing quite a lot.

But yeah, I like 'cause I, I personally I do a lot of my work on my desktop. My desktop is a windows and I do have like a good set up here, but I also have a laptop and I also see that that's fine. Like if you just had a laptop that would be OK too. and I personally like the I personally like Max, so that's my preferred OS and you can make it work either or so I wouldn't be too hung up on like which OS to go too. So yeah, that's my perspective at least.

Yeah and II would agree with that uh what channel just said so I've been using Mac books for for a long time before that I had windows machines are students have a good mix of both and with virtualization you can work on different operating systems regardless of what hardware you you actually have in front of you.

Alright, so I think this is this question is also a good question for channel. How does you be help in getting internships?

So there is a lot of different ways that you be helped out with internships. I've had two of them, two internships during my time here at you be the first one was a startup company in Buffalo. I got that through the career fair so you be has a career fair each semester, so you basically go there and you talk to the you talk to the companies like in person and then you can get interviews and stuff like that.

On the second internship I got was at IBM that was just last summer. I actually got that through through an email. I think I got in the CS Department. I think one of the alumni was looking for some students for some for some internships at IBM. So I applied, went through the portal. I had my interview process an because of the alumni like he kind of vouched for me and help me speed along the process. So other than that there are so many opportunities to get internships.

Even just by talking to professors, sometimes they have like a lot of just good connections and good resources. Also, a lot of the clubs on campus they invite like industry, people to come to their events. And when you talk to them, they might have internship opportunities available as well.

That's great, thank you.

Yep.

Here's another question. I'm a transfer student and I will be completing two years. Of course work. I can take a more courses to complete my graduation in the other. Oh, can I take up more courses to complete my graduation in the other two years?

Yeah, I. I mean, that's definitely a possibility as a transfer student you know you will be satisfied all the prereqs, prerequisite courses I guess just wanting to make sure is that when you take the courses, I don't know where your did your transferring from, but just make sure that they are equivalent to our courses. As long as that satisfied then.

We take those courses right away, yeah so.

Yeah, you should be able to take more courses in the other two years.

Alright, so um doctor Alfons, can you stay a little longer? Is it OK? We're close to one.

OK channel, can you stay a little longer to?

Yes.

OK, 'cause I actually need to teach at one so I will have to go and start preparing.

So yeah, but uh, if you if you can stay a little longer than I guess yeah, I'll just leave an, you know.

Not closed event.

The song cake.

Alright Alright Thanks everybody OK.

4.

You know everybody who is in the in the web and are now, um, thanks everybody. Uh, thank you for joining and I hope this was useful.

Bye.

Hi thank you.

Yes, I'm still here.

Yeah, so how it works is your other school sends it, so depends how long it takes for them to send it to you. Be then the emissions office reviews every coming transcript enters it into our system. So once all that is done then when our office does for transfer students is starting at May 1st we will meet with every single incoming transfer student we go over all your transfer work, how it applies to your CSS program and will let you know what to take in the file. We actually.

Register you in the fall courses and then you'll have an idea. Your graduation timeline. So I get that transferring you know it can be a stressful process so we really do. A lot tend to hold your hand through the process so in your end the most important thing to do is send your transcripts actually apply in deposit as soon as possible. So once you deposited after May 1st we can meet with every transfer student. As far as how long it takes them to get evaluated, it's first come, first serve basis.

So if you applied months ago, it should be done. If you're just applying today, it'll probably take a few weeks for them to get evaluated began. It depends on how quickly your other school sends the transcripts.

Said, Oh, there's a lot of transfers in the chat, so that kind of gives you a general sum of how it works for transfer students.

Yeah, so with financial aid and the soon Excelsior scholarship and everything they need to be taken. A consideration when you do get a personal advisor will be with you throughout your four years to make sure you're on track to graduate and you're going to always be eligible for financial aid. So if you want to add miners went double major, you always want to make sure you meet with your advisor to make sure everything you're taking is appropriate. So the one thing you can never say it you be is I don't know where to go. I don't know who to ask.

'cause you will have someone who will be your personal advisor to help guide you throughout your time.

Yeah, I would say that most go to industry.

I think that's just like probably the commonality between most universities, though I think there's still a good chunk that go to grad school. But then in the end, it really depends on the individual person and what their goals are, especially after college. So yeah, that's that's how I would answer that question.

Hum, yeah I would say that most computer scientists, uh, they do go to a programming entry level programmer after for me like I'm a computer engineer, so there's also a lot of hardware entry level positions available. I personally I'm interested in networking cyber security, so I was able to still find a lot of entry level jobs in that domain. So there is a lot of different things for CDN. Usually they go into hardware.

Or embedded systems type work, but it's really. I think it's really flexible. Really depends on your interests. Like for me like I'm interested in cyber security and I come from a computer engineering background and it works fine. So I think it just depends on what your interest is.

I haven't answered so uhm, I think it depends on so far stuff. It highly depends on the location, the company, and what position you're applying for.

But for summer internships, I would say expect anywhere for a minimum wage all the way up to maybe $40 would be OK per hour. Um, for average salary after graduation. Again, it heavily depends on your location and your company, since of course if you're working in York City, you're going to get a higher salary than you would in Buffalo. So it really depends like I can't really answer that since there's so many places you could apply for. When I was doing my job.

Search like I applied to a lot of different cities and there was a whole range of different salaries given just because of the location, it's all different. So it really depends on where your location is and what company is hiring you.

I.

Yeah, I also agree with Karl said I think like especially for a freshman and sophomore, definitely just focus on getting that experience first I mean, there are plenty of opportunities that I grabbed that were just like, you know, volunteer work for research or volunteer work for internships just to gain that exposure and the experience. So I would say just focus on getting just focus on getting opportunities that you're going to enjoy an positions that you're really going to learn a lot from first.

Lunch.

Because I mean to be kind of blunt like computer science and computer engineering does pay well. So I mean, I don't think you're going to have to worry about. Kind of like the logistics in terms of salary.

Detector deep techno. Yeah, yeah you're welcome.

Yeah that's true I'm in my freshman year for a whole year and a half I was part of the piano club that you be 'cause I like playing piano it doesn't really have to be related to computer science or engineering if you don't want to there's there's even like an outdoors club where you can go skiing there's there's there's like a ton of clubs that you be that's actually one of the benefits that going to you be like were highly diverse so there's almost a club for anything you can think about so definitely utilized that during your undergrad career yeah.

Um for me what I did my plan going into UB was so kind of early on I kind of explored on a surface level all the different types of opportunities available and then from there I really wanted to focus on some specific clubs that I wanted to be a part of so for example I really like the student Advisory Board so I kind of honed my focus on that and I've been part of that since my sophomore year all the way up to my senior year and I've progressed there's a leader another club I've been really active in is called you be networked.

In France it's cybersecurity club on campus I just really like the community and I like a cyber security so I've been again as a member for that for about 2 years so I kind of just.

And I progressed into a leader of leadership, position there as well. So I would say personally like try to, I guess, explore what you can, especially in your freshman year. While you have, you know, some good amount of time. But then try to focus on just one or two clips that you can really put your time into if you have it, you know.

But yeah, I think also academics always come first, of course, so make sure you don't fall behind on that first and foremost.

Yeah, so if you like a senior in high school, you want to go to Community College for two years on various Sunni Seamless transfer. Which means you go for computer science to a Sunni Community College, take their correct courses and then you will be on track to come to you. Be an graduate within that for your time frame, but you don't actually apply until you're ready to come to you, be.

But I also do have to guide you have another meeting to attend. So I want to say it was great to chat with everyone. I look forward to meet all of you in the fall. Thank you.

Thank you.

So the question was how in depth do programming courses get? I would say pretty in depth if you're a computer scientist, you're going to get going to take like algorithms and theory of computation and stuff like that, which is very abstract.

Even as a computer engineer, you can also opt to take you know those classes as well so the theory gets very heavy. And also I guess the practical the practical experience also gets pretty intense too for I think both sides we take like software engineering courses where I think Carl mentioned like you get to kind of apply.

It apply what you've learned for the past few years and put it into a product and stuff like that. So yeah, I would say goes pretty in depth.

Yeah.

Yep see guys.