Every College Student Should Take a Computer Science Course, says Chair at Harvey Mudd College

Maria Klawe gets a lot of attention for promoting women in CS at Harvey Mudd College, but she’s the College President. Closer to the on-the-ground action is Ran Libeskind-Hadas who is the CS Department Chair there.  In the post below, he lays out the argument for everyone taking CS in College.

I’m encouraged by an increasing number of innovative introductory courses that provide students with these rich experiences. And, I’m very excited to see students voting for these courses with their feet. At my institution, Harvey Mudd College, we developed a set of introductory courses that are not only required for all Harvey Mudd students but are now immensely popular among non-majors at our four sister institutions in the Claremont Colleges consortium. At a college of 800 students, we are teaching introductory computer science to all of our first-year students, regardless of their ultimate major. And, we are attracting hundreds of students each from our sister colleges in Claremont. They are literature, economics, and sociology majors – among many others. And Harvey Mudd does not have a monopoly on innovative introductory courses. A number of other institutions including the University of Washington, Harvard, and others have pioneered their own successful courses in a similar spirit.

via Every College Student Should Take a Computer Science Course | Ran Libeskind-Hadas.