Introductory Computer Science Education at Carnegie Mellon University: A Deans’ Perspective

The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University is planning major revisions to its introductory course sequence in ways that will affect not just our own students, but also the many students from across campus who take computer science courses. Major changes include: 1) revising our introductory courses to promote the principles of computational thinking, for both majors and nonmajors, 2) increasing our emphasis on the need to make software systems highly reliable and the means to achieve this, and 3) preparing students for a future in which programs will achieve high performance by exploiting parallel execution.