On Aug 13, 2019, at 8:37 AM, Norman Jaffe via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Kevin - which university did you go to? I was in the first class at Simon Fraser University that started in Computing Science (1974) rather than transferring in from another department... we often had TAs in one class that were students in the next one, as they had taken the first class earlier... From: "cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> To: "Adam Thornton" <athornton at gmail.com>, "cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2019 7:50:15 AM Subject: Re: Electr* Engineering In my school in Canada, the computing science program started about 1974 and grew out of the math department, but when it was formalized as a department in 1976-77 the university wisely placed it in a new ?Interdisciplinary Studies? faculty and staffed the school with people from mathematics, chemistry, physics, and some external engineering folks. It worked out very well and the program was recognized shortly as one of the best in Canada due to recognition of CS? interdisciplinary nature. > On Aug 12, 2019, at 11:05 PM, Adam Thornton via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > > At Rice in the early 90s the department was "Electrical and Computer Engineering" if my hazy memory serves. > > The genealogy of Computer Science departments (and their curricula) (at least in the US) is also weird and historically-contingent. Basically it seems to have been a tossup at any given school whether it came out of the Electr[ical|onic] Engineering department, in which case it was memories and logic gates and a bottom-up, hardware-focused curriculum, or out of the Mathematics department, in which case it was algorithms and complexity analysis and a software-focused curriculum. > > Adam

Adam Thornton <athornton at gmail.com> says: Yes, I've noticed the same thing. Example: Harvard's CS department is originally from the math side, while MIT's is from EE (thus today's EECS). Berkeley = EE Brown = Math BYU = Math Caltech = EE Columbia = EE Cornell = Operations research, math Dartmouth = Math Illinois = Math NYU = Both (because Polytechnic developed its own CS program long before NYU acquired it to regain an engineering school) Penn = EE UCLA = OR (probably because of the RAND heritage) Caltech until very recently did not formally offer CS degrees; students received degrees in Engineering and Applied Science, with a focus on CS (or aeronautics, or civil, or ME). Illinois is an example of a track we might call "other" or even "defense". With government funding the university built its own computers (including ILLIAC and PLATO), and the group that did so became the CS department, but the undergraduate CS program began within the math department. Harvard's and Penn's programs might also qualify. Undergraduate CS degrees are BA (Example: Harvard), BS (Example: Penn), or both (Example: Columbia). At Penn one must be an engineering student to major in CS. At Columbia one can major in CS in either the liberal arts or engineering schools, but with different curriculums. At Yale there is one undergraduate school, within which one can receive a BA or BS in CS, with different curriculums. Cornell, Northwestern, and Berkeley offer CS in their separate liberal arts and engineering schools; undergraduates receive BA or BS degrees with identical CS curriculums, with only other requirements differing. I've read that medical schools are good at teaching either pharmacology (drugs), or pathology (diseases); perhaps this is also because of the expertise/specialty of their early faculty members. -- geo:37.783333,-122.416667