TO: Any first-year student who lists CS or SE as major
FROM: CSSE faculty
DRAFT by David Mutchler,
This advice assumes that you share the following goals:
Ø Flexibility: At the end of your first year, you want to be able to:
1. Switch to any Rose-Hulman major and still graduate in four years without overloading.
2. Choose any of the following majors with no significant rearrangement of the “usual” schedule for that major: CS, SE, CPE and EE.
Ø Interest in CSSE: You would like to take some CSSE courses in your first year.
Ø Comparison of CS/SE with CPE/EE: You would like your first-year courses to prepare you for choosing at the beginning of your 2nd year between CS/SE and CPE/EE.
Ø
Other interests: You would like to
take courses of interest to you, in particular:
1. Foreign
Language: if you want to take it
2. Chemistry Honors: if you are eligible for and want to take it
3. Physics 3: if you want to take it
4. Humanities:
if you are not taking a foreign language, want to take it, and can get into it
Ø Normal load: You plan to take the usual number of courses each term (16 to 18 credit hours, not including College & Life Skills)
Given the above, you need a schedule by which you complete all of the following in your first year:
1. The Calculus/DE sequence (from wherever you start it)
2. Physics 1, 2 and optionally 3
3. Fundamentals of Software Development 1, 2 and optionally 3
4. Introduction to Logic Design
5. At least one term of humanities (possibly a foreign language), preferably including Rhetoric and Composition
6. If only one term of humanities, then a 3rd term of science in addition to Physics 1 & 2
Further, you should take Course K and K+1 in successive terms.
· For example, take Physics 2 immediately after Physics 1.
See
www.rose-hulman.edu/class/csse/faculty-staff\csse-department\advising\Planner\Planner.html
for a
planner program that helps a student or advisor implement the above goals.