Following a near-doubling in 2010, the number of undergraduates majoring in computer science (CS) continues to rise rapidly, with 429 Stanford undergraduates currently declared in a CS major according to an automatically generated list on the Stanford CS website.
It is imperative, especially in disciplines that attempt to either explain the world or design solutions to improve it, that classes at Stanford and across the nation engage students in truly understanding what lies at the heart of these disciplines.
After Stanford withdrew from the competition for a tech campus in New York, administrators and faculty maintain that the $3 million Stanford spent on the proposal was not wasted, and that Stanford gained much valuable experience from the venture.
My mother is a structural engineer; my dad is a computer scientist. When I entered Stanford, I was sure I was going to be techie. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in (although science seemed like a good bet), so I started off my freshman year with all of the introductory math and science classes I could take. Now, five years later, I’ve ended up with a degree in…sociology.
Ge Wang is the mastermind behind the music app start-up Smule, which has released a number of wildly successful apps, including “Ocarina,” “Magic Piano” and “I Am T-Pain.” Dedicated to sharing his love of music and pushing the boundaries of computer music, Wang is also an assistant professor of music and, by courtesy, of computer science. He also finds time to stay involved with a number of musical groups on campus, including the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) and Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPho).
Perhaps even more remarkable than the record-breaking enrollment in CS 106A last quarter was the percentage of those 594 students who were female.
Gender parity, if only in the introductory class, is encouraging news for a department that is overwhelmingly male.
Public scrutiny over a report confirming that Google Inc. spent $5.4 million on lobbying in Washington D.C. in the first three quarters of 2011 has raised awareness among students and faculty about the influence that Google and other high-tech companies wield at Stanford.
Stanford computer scientist Feross Aboukhadijeh ’11 recently discovered a bug in the widely used Adobe Flash Player that allowed malicious websites access to a Flash user’s webcam and microphone.