Overview and Learning Goals

Overview

The major in computer science focuses on critical thinking and problem-solving and is designed to blend traditional core areas (theory, systems, and artificial intelligence) with emerging or specialized subfields such as human-computer interaction, computational creativity, social and economic networks, game theory, financial machine learning, distributed systems, computational geometry, and computer vision.

Learning Goals

A student graduating from Bowdoin with a computer science major will:

1. have critical thinking skills enabling the solution of problems by developing and analyzing algorithms;
2. have a variety of skills enabling the design, implementation, debugging, and testing of complex problems using a programming language;
3. have experience working on a large computer science project;
4. be able to connect the use of computer science to other disciplines and have the experience of working on at least one project that does this directly;
5. have the opportunity to engage with current research in computer science, including reading the literature, learning advanced material independently, and working on a research project under the supervision of a faculty member;
6. have experience working as part of a team;
7. be able to recognize, identify, and analyze the social and ethical issues that arise from the use of computer science techniques in society; and
8. have experience presenting technical content in both oral and written form.

Options for Majoring or Minoring in the Department

Students may elect to major in computer science, the computer science and mathematics interdisciplinary major, or to coordinate the computer science major with digital and computational studies, education, or environmental studies. Students pursuing a coordinate or interdisciplinary major may not normally elect a second major. Non-majors may elect to minor in computer science.

Department Website