In 1991, the university undertook a complete overhaul of its Computer Science curriculum. The overhaul was provoked by a critical self-analysis which concluded that contemporary curricula, including that at the university, did not prepare students well for either industry or graduate study. Students were training to write 300-line programs, by themselves, from scratch, in a dead language. Obviously, this system is the antithesis of what is needed by a contemporary computing professional both more rigor and more skill development were sorely needed. As part of the overhaul, a new curriculum philosophy and overview were detailed; seven new core courses were developed, incorporating a closed-laboratory component in four of the courses. With the closed laboratory playing such a critical role in the success of this curriculum, the laboratory equipment must be up-to-date and reliable. In this project, support for two types of equipment purchase is provided for the closed-laboratory activities: new PCs for the laboratory classrooms and a new robot for software engineering projects.
