Date:

Chairperson:

Department:


CIS Annual Report for Academic Year 2006-2007


Please respond to each question. Use as much space as you need before going on to the next question.


1)  What were your department’s goals as stated in the 2005-2006 annual report? To what extent were they realized in academic year 2006-2007?


We were not required to submit an annual report in 2005-06 since we were being evaluated by external reviewers and did a self-study.


2)  What were the major events of the year for your department?


a.   The completion of a proposal for a BS in Multimedia Computing (BS-MMC), which has now been approved by the Board and by SED.

 

b.   The resignation of Lori Scarlatos to go to SUNY Stony Brook and the illness of Ahmet Eskicioglu. These were our two multimedia specialists, and their departure calls into question our ability to implement the BS-MMC. We have hired Sheila Tejada, another MMC specialist as a Visiting Associate Professor for 2007-08, but a permanent line for such a specialist has not yet been allocated for 2008-09. Without such a line, implementation of the program is problematic.

 

c.   The passage by Faculty Council of a proposal for a BBA concentration in information systems, only to have it sidetracked by the CUNY Chancellery. Instead, we were advised to modify the existing but moribund BS-MPS Program in CIS and Economics to a BS-MPS in business information systems, and then to create a new standalone BS Program in information systems (BS-IS) based on the undergraduate requirements of the revised BS-MPS. We successfully revised the BS-MPS, and that change has been approved by the Board and SED. We are now working to implement the program.

 

We are also now working on obtaining approval for the BS-IS, whose curriculum has been passed by both CIS and Economics. CUNY has agreed to fast-track the BS-IS proposal, once it is approved by Faculty Council. It is unclear what Faculty Council approvals the proposal needs, whether approval by Master Planning, then Council in principle, and then CUCDR approval of the detailed curriculum and FC approval of curriculum; or whether the Master Planning/in-principle FC approval step can be bypassed for the fast –track proposal so that it goes directly to CUCDR. Meanwhile the proposal has been sent to both master Planning and CUCDR, and we await them to sort it out in early Fall.

 

d.   We made important changes in our undergraduate major and non-major curricula, steering them somewhat more in the direction of realistic application development and problem-solving. This also brought the major in alignment with Curriculum 2001, the standard curriculum recommended by the leading computer science professional societies (the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society). Important steps in this direction were:

 

i.   instituting science sections of our entry level course, CIS 1.5

 

ii.  changing the entry computer language in the gateway major series, CIS 1.5, 15 and 22, from C to C++, which is used more in industry for serious system development. We also revamped the syllabi of the entire series. These changes have already been implemented and are now in effect in the classroom.

 

iii. introducing two new courses in the Design and Implementation of Application Systems, and making them required courses for the major. At the same time, we are combining two other required courses into one (CIS 4.1 and 27 into CIS 27.1) and dropping the requirement of another existing course (CIS 24, Programming Languages). These changes in the major are up for approval by Faculty Council early next year.

 

iv. approving a new minor in Distributed and Parallel Computing to achieve two simultaneous goals

 

·      attracting non-major science students to departmental offerings. This will make them better scientists and more valuable to research and science work, and

 

·      providing CIS students with broader employment opportunities. Graduates knowledgeable in Parallel and Distributed Processing are much sought after in technology and science-oriented industries and in science academic and research support positions in universities across the country.

 

This proposal has also been sent to Faculty Council.


v.   strengthening our offerings to non-majors via the new Core and via computing courses with fewer prerequisites and increased interdisciplinary appeal.

 

vi. appealing to wider classes of students, especially women, by developing themed Core and gateway courses in robotics and graphics, and in applications of computing to law, medicine and business.

 

 

e.   The development of stronger articulation with community college feeders, such as Kingsborough, BMCC and NYCT. Meetings were held with all three schools, and students from Kingsborough came to our department to see some of our activities and offerings. Feedback was very favorable, and we hope to make Community College CIS Day at BC an annual event.

 

f.   Implementation of two new Core computing classes—the lower-tier CC 3.12 (Computing—Its Nature, Power and Limits) and the upper-tier CC 30.03 (Exploring Robotics). These two courses have been quite successful, and have significantly increased our Core FTEs.

 

g.   Reversing the past years’ downward trend in both our total FTEs and our FTEs in introductory courses, as shown in the table on the next page. The number of total undergraduate student FTEs covered by CIS rose by over 18%. More significantly, the number of introductory non-Core CIS student FTEs has risen by more than 27%, and the number of Core CIS student FTEs has risen by more than 43%.




 

 

 

05-06

06-07

Increase

a.

Core

CIS 1.0

118.0

17.2

 

b.

 

Core 5.1

98.6

---

 

c.

 

CC 3.12

---

258.8

 

d.

 

CC 30.3

---

35.4

 

e. ( =a+b+c+d)

Total Core

 

216.6

311.4

94.8 ( + 43.8%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

f.

Intro CIS

CIS 1.5

66.4

76.4

 

g.

 

CIS 5.2

132.0

175.6

 

h. ( =f+g)

Total Intro CIS

 

198.4

252.0

53.6 ( + 27.0%)

i. ( =e+h)

Total Core & Intro

 

415.0

563.4

148.4 (+ 35.8%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

j.

Other CIS

Other CIS

353.5

344.8

 

k. ( =h+j)

Total non-Core, non-Intro CIS

 

551.9

596.8

44.9 (+ 8.1%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

l. ( =e+k)

Total Core & CIS

 

768.5

908.2

139.7 (+ 18.2%)

 

 

FTE Enrollment of Students In Undergraduate Courses Sponsored by CIS

 

2006-07 Compared to 2005-06

 


 

h.      Department faculty obtained and implemented a number of grants:

 

i.         The NSF grant on Broadening Participation in Computing (Profs. Sklar, Rudowsky, Chopra and Parsons) has completed its first year, and we have run themed sections of CC 3.12, CIS 1.5 and CIS 15 under its auspices. We have also sponsored classes and a summer institute for high school students to attract them to computing. Professor Sklar also obtained an NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) supplement to this grant.

 

ii.        Professors Ted Raphan, Simon Parsons, and Frank Grasso (Psychology) have an NSF-MRI grant to develop an Agents Lab for designing sensor-based robot motion control. This is being done in Professor Raphan’s lab. The group now has Aibo quadrupedal robots that they have enhanced and the group is in the process of designing learning algorithms to improve the robots’ locomotor performance. They have also obtained two bipedal robots that are in the process of being enhanced, and will soon begun work on algorithmic design of the locomotion characteristics.

 

This work is being supported by a CUNY collaborative grant (Simon Parsons, Jizhong Xiao (City College), and Ted Raphan), which has been ongoing for the past two years and will end this September. It is also in part being supported by Professor Raphan’s Locomotion grant from the NIH and a Core Center grant from the NIH. The student participants on this grant are two doctoral students and one undergraduate student from City College (Dept. of Electrical Engineering).

 

iii.       Dina Sokol received a research grant from NSF for developing software for Tandem Repeats, and a database of repeats for the Human Genome, funded by the NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure (http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~sokol/tandem.)

 

            A tandem repeat in DNA is a sequence of two or more contiguous, approximate copies of a pattern. They are important in numerous fields including disease diagnosis, mapping studies, human identity testing, sequence homology, and population studies.

 

            Dr. Sokol and her students have developed an efficient algorithm to find all tandem repeats over the edit distance. The description of this algorithm has appeared in the Bioinformatics journal, and was presented both at the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) and at the Haifa Stringology Research Workshop.

 

            They have implemented the algorithm in C++, and it is available for use

            on the Web. They are also distributing the source code upon request under the Aladdin Free Public License. Thus far, they have received requests from many diverse research groups including: Boston University, University of California, University of Georgia, Indiana University, CNRS Montpellier, France, Yahoo Research in India, and PhD students in Germany and New Zealand.

 

            They are currently developing a database at the project website that will contain the tandem repeats found in the genome of the homo sapiens. The results will be presented both in tabular format, and graphically.

 

iv.       Professors Chaya Gurwitz, Ted Raphan and Elizabeth Sklar, plus faculty from other departments, received an NSF CCLI (Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement) grant in connection with the program for the STAR high school.

 

v.         We have also just been notified that, as part of a consortium led by Georgia Tech, we have been awarded an NSF grant to spread innovation in computer science curricula. The Brooklyn College effort for this is led by Professor Elizabeth Sklar and also involves Professors Rudowsky and Weiss.

 

vi.       Professor Sklar also obtained and began work on a grant from the NSF STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) program on Academic Assessment Within a Community of Evolving Learners, together with a company that does assessment of elementary school children, to determine learning from game activities. She has also been informed that a continuation proposal to the Department of Education SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) is being funded.

 

Prof. Sklar does research in a number of areas:

 

·         simulation and modeling of large datasets from the education sector;

 

·         modeling and applying interaction mechanisms in multi-agent systems;

 

·         developing intelligent interactive learning systems;

 

·         educational robotics.

 

i.         Distinguished Professor Ted Raphan continued his astonishing record of grant procurement and renewal with continuation of funding from NIH. Raphan and his team recently implanted an artificially constructed vestibular system, a component of the human central nervous system, into a robot "dog". The resulting studies, focusing on primate locomotion, will eventually help scientists to develop better techniques for curing neurological disturbances that affect many people’s daily activities, particularly walking.

 

Raphan has discovered that, although the vestibular system is extremely adaptive, an impaired vestibular system can be quite debilitating, causing imbalance, vertigo, and disorientation. This imbalance can prevent an individual from walking normally or performing normal daily activities.

Raphan's research team, which includes Professor Simon Parsons, equipped the quadruped robot to sense velocity and acceleration, and to stabilize gaze-key functions for both human and robot locomotion.

The vestibular system, which includes the sensory organ for angular and linear acceleration embedded in our skulls, governs balance, eye and head movements, and body position in space.

Using a commercially available Sony AIBO quadruped robot, Raphan and his team mounted an acceleration sensor in its head. The robot was then equipped with a lightweight binocular ocular system. The software was developed by Raphan himself, an authority on the applications of computers to the study of the brain's function.

The robot and its artificial system mimic primates' neurological reactions to head and eye movements that occur during locomotion; the software sends out command signals that compensate for any small change in movement.

This research sets up a symbiotic relationship between understanding human and robot locomotion. The research can be used to help understand the gait of patients who have trouble walking or with balance, due to illnesses such as Parkinson's disease or vestibular imbalance. On the other hand, the implanted system will make the "dog" walk more naturally, and should help in the design of robots that navigate better over uneven terrain.

Professor Raphan also has received grants from NIH on modeling the neural basis for learning and on modeling the neural basis for motion sickness.

viii.     Professors Amotz Bar-Noy and Simon Parsons participated in a consortial CUNY-based grant from IBM, US DOD and the UK Armed Forces. The project, which involves a number of universities in the US and the UK, aims at creating an international collaborative research culture of academia, industry, and government. Aspects of the collaboration include:

 

·         Innovative multidisciplinary approaches

·         Developing ground-breaking fundamental science

·         Empowering innovators

·            Developing understanding of the root cause of military technical challenges

·         Making an impact on coalition military effectiveness

·         Focusing on key problems with a critical mass of researchers

·         Gaining synergies from UK/US alignment

·         Innovative transition model

 

Two of the projects in this collaboration that our faculty are working on are network theory, to enable the formation and operation of ad-hoc teams, and sensor information processing and delivery from distributed sensor networks to support enhanced decision-making

 

ix.       Professor Bar-Noy received a grant from NSF on communication algorithm and a grant from New York State on energy efficiency algorithms.

 

x.         Professors Whitlock, Clark and Cox obtained a WDI (Workforce Development Initiative) from CUNY to develop curricula in Parallel and Distributed Computing. They have developed proposals for an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate in this area. They are applying for another WDI grant for 07-08.

 

xi.       Professor Chaya Gurwitz received a summer grant from the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education to develop a Web resource for students taking the science related CIS 1.5. Professors Yedidyah Langsam and Professor Theodore Raphan received an award of Compact I funds from the College to develop a workbook for teaching science related 1.5. This will be combined with the work that Professor Gurwitz is doing to form a comprehensive resource for science-based instruction in CIS 1.5 for both undergraduates and the high school students in the Star program.

 

xii.   Professors Parsons and Sklar are Senior Personnel on an NSF GK12 grant "City as Lab," led by Professors Wayne Powell (Geology) and Eleanor Miele (Education), which will fund 10 science PhD students for the next five years to work with public school teachers to advance science curriculum. In particular, the project will fund computer science students to bring modeling and simulation tools into the classroom. A number of CIS doctoral students will participate in this project in 2007-08.

 

xiii.  Overall, our department received four Compact grants from the College.

 

xiv.  Eleven members of our faculty received PSC-CUNY grants for 2007-08.

 

i.   Establishing a Robotics Laboratory in 233R, under the auspices of Professors Parsons, Raphan, Sklar and Grasso (Psychology). This laboratory is now fully operational for both educational and research activities.

 

j.   Faculty signed book contracts with prestigious publishers and produced important monographs:

 

i.   Professor Noson Yanofsky has a contract from Cambridge University Press for a text on quantum computing, a leading-edge subfield of Computer Science and Physics.

 

ii.  Professor Danny Kopec received a contract from Thomson Publishing for a book on artificial intelligence, together with Prof. Steven Lucci of City College.

 

iii. Professors Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter have produced a monograph on Open Source Software, an important computing phenomenon at the leading edge of today’s application and system software worlds. The book is published by Routledge. They are now working on obtaining a contract for a second book.

 

iv. Professor Paula Whitlock is under contract with Wiley-VCH, Heidelberg, Germany, to produce the second edition of her classic book, "Monte Carlo Methods: Basics", whose first edition has been in print for more than 20 years. The co-author is Malvin Kalos of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

 

k.   A world-class mini-conference on Mathematical Methods in Social Science was held at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, organized by Distinguished Professor Rohit Parikh and Professor Noson Yanofsky. Leading logicians and game-theorists came together at the College to disseminate and discuss the latest mathematical results on a number of topics of social science, including voting behavior and methods, promoting behavior for the common good, group dynamics, etc. This conference was held on the same day as the Sprague-Taylor Lecture of the Department of Philosophy, and the Lecture was incorporated into the Conference Program. The interaction of the Philosophers and Logicians was quite beneficial to everyone.

 

The Indian Institute of Technology organized a meeting in January 2007 in honor of Professor Rohit Parikh’s 70th birthday and, following this meeting, a letter written by three IIT faculty describing Prof. Parikh’s recent work appeared in the Times of India (the Indian equivalent of the New York Times). The meeting was attended by prominent logicians from Australia, Europe and the US as well as, of course, from India.

 

The Graduate Center, with support from the Department, also organized a meeting in honor of Prof. Parikh on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and many leaders in the field of logic, from the United States and abroad, attended. Professor Noson Yanofsky was a co-organizer of this meeting.

 

Also, a project on Social Software was organized in the fall of 2006 at The Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, led by Jan van Eijck and Rineke Verbrugge. Prof. Parikh gave two talks there, as well as talks in Paris and Bristol.

 

Prof. Parikh also gave the first Simon Newcomb Lecture at Johns Hopkins last December and an invited talk at the Association for Symbolic Logic meeting in Chicago in March.

 

l.   Graduate curriculum changes were also introduced:

 

i.   We removed the 600-level courses from our two Master’s programs, so that students will begin the program with graduate level study in computer science.

 

ii.  We instituted four new graduate courses, CIS 712—Social Software, CIS 717.2—Advanced Database Systems, CIS 717.5—Multimedia Databases, and CIS 728—Quantum Computing. These courses were also added to the curriculum of our two Master’s programs.

 

iii. We developed a proposal for a Graduate Certificate in Parallel and Distributed Computing, an area where there is a serious shortage of competent professionals. This proposal is now being converted to a formal Letter of Intent.

 

m. Professors Parsons and Sklar were the recipients of the Technical Innovation Award, Robotics Competition and Exhibition, at the 21st Annual Conference of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2006.

 

Professor Parsons is doing research on three main areas:

 

·      Agent communication: developing and analyzing formal models of communication between intelligent systems, especially models based on logical argumentation.

 

·      Electronic markets: developing new algorithms for automated commodity trading and new kinds of commodity market in which these algorithms can be deployed.

 

·      Mobile robots: deploying coordinated teams of robots, and learning new kinds of gait for legged robots.

 

n.   Professor Elizabeth Sklar organized the Second Annual New York City Regional RoboCup Junior Competition in February 2007 at the CUNY Graduate Center. This competition involves students (of high-school age and below) developing robots to play soccer, dance, and accomplish other tasks in a competition that is both educational and entertaining.

 

o.   Professor Neng-Fa Zhou’s B-Prolog CSP solver (Prolog from Brooklyn) won in two categories in the Second International Solvers Competition. 21 solvers from around the world entered the competition and 3425 problem instances were used to evaluate and rank the solvers. The problems were divided into five categories. The B-Prolog CSP solver was ranked top in two of the most important categories. B-Prolog gave no wrong answer on any test, where many other solvers that entered the competition did produce at least one wrong answer.

 

16)Discuss your department’s activities in the following areas:

 

a)  curricular change

 

See items 2a., c.-f., and l.

 

b)  participation in the Core

 

See items 2f. and 2g. We offered over 70 sections of Core courses in 2006-07. The Chair of CIS also chaired the College Core Curriculum Committee.

 

c)  developing new programs and discontinuing old ones

 

See items 2a., 2c., 2d.iv., 2l.i., and 2l.iii. We also proposed a new MS program in Information Assurance and Security that was not brought forward by the administration.

 

We also decided not to revive the joint Master’s in CIS and Health Science.

 

d)  participation in faculty development, including the use of educational technology

 

We are heavy users of educational technology, but have not had formally organized faculty development in this area.

 

Professor Scott Dexter has received a Faculty Development CUE grant for next year to work with Laurel Cooley of Mathematics to teach mathematics through computing applications. As part of a larger project dedicated to integrating learning theory more fully with math classroom practice, they plan to develop 3-4 curriculum modules for an undergraduate linear algebra course. These modules will be designed with three purposes: (1) to allow students to explore some mathematical ideas behind several computer science applications, such as watermarking and image processing; (2) to draw on well-established theories of how people learn math, using these theories with the students so that the students may also reflect on their learning as it occurs; (3) to provide a framework within which faculty may reflect on themselves as learners and teachers. The integration of mathematical content, applications, and math learning theories will provide an enhanced experience of learning not only linear algebra content but also learning about students’ own learning processes.

 

We have also proposed a Faculty Development project to help our faculty familiarize themselves with the two new application design and implementation courses we are adding to our curriculum.

 

e)  any modifications in departmental organization

 

None.

 

f)   improvement of services to students

 

Additional advice to students regarding career opportunities, CIS as a major, and CIS courses for non-majors have been placed on our website, communicated to students via mailings, and communicated to the Magner Center for dissemination. We have also worked closely with the Magner Center in communicating employment opportunities and internships to our students.

 

We sent a mailing to all our majors and to students enrolled in non-major courses, making them aware of opportunities in computing at Brooklyn College and in industry. We included detailed advice on courses to register for, prerequisites, and applicable academic regulations.

 

We produce two extensive student advice brochures, both in print and on the Web, one for undergraduates, and one for graduate students.

 

We make constant use of the billboards in the hall outside our offices to post advice and information useful to our students.

 

Student counseling via electronic means (Website, email and instant messaging) has increased, in addition to face-to-face counseling. On-line courses have been instituted for student convenience, and have proved popular.

 

g)  reaching out to your majors and advising your students

 

See item f) above.

 

h)  increasing faculty diversity

 

We have not hired, nor searched for, any new permanent staff in 2006-07. We did hire a female Visiting Associate Professor, Sheila Tejada, for 2007-08, and we believe she is from a non-majority population. We also hired new non-majority adjuncts.

 

i)   increasing curricular diversity

 

The combination of our Core, service, undergraduate major, and graduate courses makes our computer science program one the most diverse in the City. We expect that changes to the program requirements listed in items 2a, 2c, 2d.iv. and 21 will further enhance this diversity.

 

We are also concentrating on improving gender diversity. While Brooklyn College is nearly 70% female, the department’s student body is nearly 70% male. This is not out of line with national figures for gender diversity in computer science, but is being increasingly recognized as a focus area for improvement in both academia and the information technology industry. As part of our Bridges to Computing program, we are developing themed versions of our Core, entry-level programming, and intermediate programming courses. Such themed sections, with a recognizable emphasis on computer applications in addition to computer methodology, are theorized to be more appealing to women. A number of previous national initiatives support this theory.

 

Bridges to Computing is also working to attract minority, urban high school students to computing with summer institutes and enrichment high school computing activities.

 

One of our Compact initiatives, under the supervision of Professor Jacqueline Jones, was to bring in a speaker and hold a lunch to promote the formation of a Women in Computing chapter at the College. Marjorie Skubic of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of Missouri-Columbia spoke on Recognition Technology for Functional Assessment of Older Adults, a topic in which, experience has shown, women are interested. Note that the topic also promotes diversity in the direction of older adults, who are the subject of study and the target of the technologies discussed.

 

In addition, Dr. Fran Allen, the most recent Turing Awardee (the Turing Award is the highest in the discipline of computer science) is scheduled to talk at the College on October 23, 2007, to promote diversity in computing.

 
j)   reviewing, assessing, re-vitalizing good programs

 

We underwent an external department review in May 2006, and are working to develop a multiyear strategic plan, after changes were suggested in the plan we put forward initially. As a result of that external review, we have assessed and revised our major, and are developing a number of new programs, as outlined extensively earlier in this Report.

 

We have carried out assessment exercises in CC 3.12, CIS 1.5 and in CIS 27 this year. We expect to carry out additional assessment activities on a continuing basis.

 

See also the items referenced in 3a. and 3c. above.

 

k)  funded research

 

See item 2h. Professors Dexter, Kopec, Yarmish, Zhou and Harrow also submitted external funding proposals.

 

l)   involvement of students (undergraduate, masters, doctoral) in research.

 

Under our CIS 88.X program, undergraduate students are doing quality research with faculty. Additional research is being done by Master’s and Doctoral students. Centers for student research in our department include the Institute for Neural and Intelligent Systems (Prof. Raphan), The Agents Laboratory (Profs. Sklar and Parsons), The METIS Laboratory (Profs. Whitlock, Clark, Cox and Gross), The Bridges to Computing Project (Professors Sklar, Parsons, Rudowsky and Chopra), Turingscraft (Professors Arnow and Weiss), and individual mentorships by Profs. Sokol, Dexter, Yanofsky and Kopec.

 

17)With regard to your department’s Outcomes Assessment Plan:

 

a)  Do you have a mission statement, program goals, learning objectives/course grid and examples of assessment tools?  

 

We have all of the above.

 

b)  If yes, have these materials been reviewed by the faculty resource person for your division and/or Michael Anderson, the Director of Academic Assessment?

 

Yes.

 

c)  Do they agree that your department is ready to begin implementation of its Outcomes Assessment Plan?

 

We have not yet adopted an overall Outcomes Assessment Plan, though we are well along in assessment activities.

 

d)  If you are ready, which goal(s) have you chosen to assess through which objectives in which specific courses for the upcoming year? 

 

This decision has not yet been made for 2007-08.

 

18)What resources, including special equipment, were obtained last year by your department?

 

Several faculty received new computers and/or printers.

 

The department obtained replacement fax and copy machines and an HP All-in-One low-speed Color Copier/Fax/Scanner/Printer, for administrative and research use.

 

The Metis project received 6 Dell quad-processors last academic year from STF funds, which were installed during the summer of 2006.

 

The Bridges, Agents and Robotics programs received a laptop cart of MacBook computers, other computers and servers, and a large number of different kinds of robots from grants and from STF funds.

 

Prof. Yedidyah Langsam replaced his student network in his laboratories, and Professor Theodore Raphan purchased a great deal of equipment for his research work. Professor Raphan also assembled a number of powerful leading-edge computers, saving the College, the Department and his grants a great deal of money and providing cutting-edge computers, ahead of what companies have yet assembled for mass production.

 

Department research overhead funds were used extensively to support and upgrade the departmental UNIX research network to provide redundancy, additional storage, additional robustness and extended usability.

 

19)Describe your efforts to secure funding for:

 

a)  professional development

 

We have requested from the Provost released time funds to allow professional development to enable us to implement the changes to our major.

 

b)  research

 

See items 2h. and 3k.

 

c)  student scholarships

 

Professor Elizabeth Sklar, together with Professors Basil (Biology) and Perdikaris (Anthropology) submitted an NSF SSTEM proposal to fund scholarships in Science and Technology. The proposal was not funded.

 

d)  support of departmental goals.

 

See items 2h. and 3k. In addition, 8 STF funding proposals were submitted this year.

 

20)Discuss your department’s participation in the following:

 

a)  collaborations/partnerships and/or interdisciplinary programs with other departments, colleges, or levels of education (i.e., K-12 or doctoral)

 

We offer cross-listed courses with the Departments of Art (inactive), Biology, Economics, Education (inactive), Health and Nutrition Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology.

 

Professor Samir Chopra teaches for the Honors College and for the Philosophy department. Professor Brinton (English) teaches for CIS.

 

We offer a joint BS-MPS program with Business that has just been revamped, and a joint undergraduate major in Computational Mathematics with Mathematics. We are proposing a joint BS program with Business. We have a joint minor in cognitive science with Philosophy and Psychology.

 

Professors Raphan, Parsons and Sklar are working with Professors Powell (Geology) and Miele (Education) on an NSF GK12 grant, “City as Lab” (see item 2.h.xii).

 

We participate in the Engineering Program, jointly with Polytechnic University and City College.

 

We have joint Collaborative programs with City College, and have proposed one with College of Staten Island.

 

We have been told we will be awarded a consortial grant with a group led by Georgia Institute of Technology to develop innovative computer science curricula.

 

We have articulation agreements with Kingsborough and BMCC, and are developing one with NYCCT.

 

Distinguished Professor Ted Raphan does research in collaboration with Mount Sinai Medical Center and with City College.

 

Professor Efstathios Zachos is active in bringing doctoral students from National Technical University of Athens to Brooklyn College and CUNY, and has a presence at NTUA..

 

We offered a section of CC 3.12 to the Nurses’ Program at the SUNY Brooklyn Medical Center.

 

We hosted a group of Kingsborough computer science students who were interested in the possibility of transferring to Brooklyn College. We presented a number of our research and educational projects to the students. The visit was very well received.

 

Professors Sklar, Rudowsky, Parsons and Chopra are active in the Bridges to Computing project, and run a summer institute and enrichment courses at Brooklyn College for high school students from throughout Brooklyn. They are working with a professor from Columbia University, who is responsible for assessing the program.

 

Professor Elizabeth Sklar is active in working with elementary school students and assessing their learning as part of ED and NSF grants.

 

Professor Sklar also organized high school teacher training programs on the Java programming language, as part of the ACM Computer Science Teachers’ Association TECS program, and on educational robotics in connection with the RoboCup Junior Regional Competition at the Graduate Center.

 

Professor Sklar also runs an educational robotics outreach program that places BC undergraduates and graduate students in local public schools. The students work with teachers and bring robotics and other technology to classrooms and after-school programs. In 2006-07, the schools she worked with included, in Brooklyn, the Mark Twain Middle School and several schools on the Wingate High School campus (in collaboration with the BC Community Partnership; and, in Manhattan, the Booker T Washington Middle School and the Bard Early College High School.

 

Professor Ted Raphan and Chaya Gurwitz are active in the Star High School Project, doing curriculum development and teaching in the program. They recently received an NSF grant together with faculty from Biology and Anthropology.

 

We are an important part of the CUNY Doctoral Program in Computer Science. A number of our faculty teach in the program regularly and mentor doctoral students. We also support a number of doctoral students through grants, Graduate Fellowships, and adjunct teaching.

 

Two of our faculty, Professor Danny Kopec and Professor Gabriel Yarmish organized a conference at the Graduate Center in Computer and Human Errors.

 

We supported and participated in a Conference at the Graduate Center in honor of Professor Rohit Parikh’s 70th birthday. A similar conference was held in India. Prof. Parikh also lectured several times in the Netherlands.

 

Professors Bar-Noy and Parsons participate in a CUNY grant from IBM, the US Department of Defense, and the UK Armed Forces.

 

Professors Sokol, Kopec and Zhou are each working separately with faculty from Biology on various projects.

 

Professor Paula Whitlock spent part of her sabbatical at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. She also organized a conference at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

 

Professors Kopec and Yarmish worked with faculty from SUNY Old Westbury to organize a conference on Computer and Human Errors at the Graduate Center. Professor Yarmish also submitted NSF grant proposals with faculty from Polytechnic University.

 

Professor Parsons collaborated, on separate projects, with faculty and researchers from University of Liverpool, England, Columbia/Presbyterian Hospital, the Spanish National Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (CSIC/IIIA) in Barcelona, the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Professor Sklar collaborates with faculty from Columbia University, Teachers’ College, Maquarie University in Sydney, Australia, Vrije Universitat in Amsterdam, and the Spanish national institute for Artificial intelligence (CSIC?IITA) in Barcelona.

 

 

Professors Sklar and Parsons have hosted a number of visiting graduate students from universities in Spain, Denmark and The Netherlands, each of whom came to BC for 4-6 months and did research leading to their doctoral theses.

 

b)  teacher education programs

 

We are currently not involved in teacher education programs, although we are looking into the possibility of an Education concentration in CIS.

 

c)  multicultural activities

 

With Compact funds, we have begun working on organizing a Women in Computing chapter at the College. The Bridges to Computing project works primarily with minority high school students.

 

d)  community programs

We have placed interns with the Church Avenue Merchants Business Association.

 

e)  distance or distributed learning projects

 

We began offering online courses in Fall 2006, and are continuing to do so.

 

f)   multimedia projects