Senior Seminar: A Capstone Course in the Computer and Mathematical Sciences
Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal
Senior Seminar: A Capstone Course in the Computer and Mathematical Sciences
Ken Oberhof 0 1
Ron Barnes 0 1
Mathematics Education Commons 0 1
0 University of Houston , Downtown
1 Ken Oberhoff and Ron Barnes University of Houston-Downtown 1 Main Street Houston, Texas 77002 , USA
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Senior Seminar: A Capstone Course in the Computer and
Mathematical Sciences
SUMMARY
This paper describes the evolution of a course
developed to tie together many strands of activity
encountered by students in the computer and mathematical
sciences (CMS). The senior level course is required of
all majors in our computer science, applied
mathematics and statistics undergraduate degree programs. One
of the primary purposes of the course is to refine
writing and presentation skills needed for those who will
later pursue individual research projects. Writing
projects are organized around the theme of “Ethical
Decision Making in the Computer and Mathematical
Sciences”. Numerous case studies are investigated.
Additional topics in the course include designing
resumes, starting a placement file, and a general
introduction to the CMS culture. A course outline is given
and various projects are discussed.
required to successfully complete a speech course
(SPCH 1304) and a technical writing course (ENG
3302), offered outside the department. These are
prerequisites for our senior seminar course (CS/MATH
4294). Based on student performance in the seminar
and other factors, the student follows up with either
an individual research project (CS/MATH 4395),
directed by a faculty member and/or an outside
mentor, or the student selects one of our senior level
writing courses (W) in the department to fulfill his/her
writing requirement. W-courses, cross-listed, include
Math Modeling and Computer Simulation (CS/
MATH 4306), History of Mathematics and Computer
Science (CS/MATH 4312), Parallel Programming (CS/
MATH 4328), and Advanced Numerical Methods
(CS/MATH 4301).
INTRODUCTION
Since 1984, all students at UH/D, regardless of major,
must fulfill writing and speech requirements to
graduate. These include at least one writing course given in
their major department. In addition, since 1995, the
university has required all graduating seniors to
successfully complete some course material on ethics as
it relates to their major.
SENIOR SEMINAR—AN EVOLVING COURSE
This paper is based on a talk given by the authors at While the original purpose of the SS course was to
the joint national meetings of MAA/AMS in San An- refine the writing and presentation skills needed to
tonio on January 14, 1999. successfully complete later senior research projects,
the course has now evolved to address the changing
needs and college requirements.
To address the college-wide ethics requirement (noted
earlier), the SS has developed a focus on ethical
issues in some of the written and oral projects assigned.
Because of the large number of required courses in
our degree programs, we did not have the luxury of
offering an entire course in ethics, in our department,
as some other colleges have done [
7
].
The CMS department has developed a general
approach to meet these requirements, utilizing its pre- EARLIEST VERSIONS OF SENIOR SEMINAR COURSE
existing Senior Seminar (SS) course, which had been Originally this course consisted of a number of
readintroduced in 1987. Originally the ethics requirement ings from somewhat “popular” books oriented
towas satisfied by a separate course, but the material wards the computer and mathematical sciences, and
was added to the seminar in 1997 by increasing the then the assignment of short written and oral reports
credit hours from one to two. on the results of those readings. Among the books
assigned were Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
In addition to the usual CMS courses, each major is Braid [
3
], Mathematics—The Loss of Certainty [
5
], The
Dream of Reason [
6
] and A Brief History of Time [
2
].
In addition, each student prepared a one page vita/
resume. Students discussed each others resumes and
we discussed how to tailor different forms of a vita to
different audiences. Students also critiqued each
others’ oral presentations and quickly learned to be more
diplomatic in their criticisms as they discovered the
truth of the adage that “What goes round, comes
round.”
The final written and oral projects in this SS course
were the individual student Senior Project Research
proposals. In the earlier years of our CMS programs,
all our majors were required to follow the SS course
with individual Senior Projects. However, as the
number of majors increased dramatically, it became clear
that other alternatives to individual Senior Projects
were needed. Also, as noted earlier, in 1995, the
college instituted an ethics component for all degree
programs.
PRESENT FORM OF SENIOR SEMINAR COURSE (...truncated)