Gang,
	As part of our ABET acceditation process we have introduced
an alumni survey to understand how recent graduates of the program
feel about their Stony Brook Computer Science education.   The
raw results are available for viewing at

	http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~survey/faculty

where the alumni surveys are those submitted March 15-23, 2005.
The 19 alumni who submitted responses are all employees of Citigroup,
but otherwise not identified.

	My analysis of the results is as follows:

-- It is gratifying to see that most of the alumni are quite satified
with their Stony Brook education.   The tenor of the responses is far
more positive than what we see with the graduating student surveys.
Some of this reflects the greater maturity of the parties involved,
but also suggests greater appreciation of what we are doing after
exposure to the working world.

(*) In particular, 16 of the 19 respondants said that they WOULD
recommend Stony Brook Computer Science to other people.



Here are recommendations on what we should change to improve the major:

(*) More emphaisis on database management, particularly stored procedures.

-- Several respondants complained about faculty who cannot speak English

-- Courses should cover reflexion (I have no idea what this is, but the
	bloke claims to use this every day at work)

(*) Add specialty directions; more focus on business

-- Make 336 AND 305 a prereq for 308

-- Several respondents suggested that we should expose students to more languages than
Java, although one was able to switch languages when it was needed for his/her job

-- More time should be spend on documentation

(*) -- One guy suggested distinguishing between students with academic or
corporate professional aspirations.  This might be a role for our honors
program

-- Too many restrictions on registering for courses

-- More new technology should be added

-- Need some type of class on scripting

(*) -- Research classes should be announced so that everyone knows about it.




****  The following nice things were said about our program
(I usually post complaints, so this is fair play)

Good -- could directly apply my major to my work

I feel that our CSE major program is outstanding and really prepared me for the "real world".  

I would keep everything in the program the same.

Looking back, and observing other students who have graduated from various Universities
with a Computer Science degree, I must say that the program I attended gave me a very
strong understanding of the concepts in the field.

It is one of the best programs I know, based on observing students from other (even more
expensive) universities who have finished the same major.

same education as NYU collegue
 
Even though I am complaning about some of the stuff I think we have one of the best
curriculum in the country. Even though I was an average student I feel very much prepared
for the real world. There is a lot of things I need to learn but Stony Brook gave me the
strong base I needed.

Throughout my undergrad years, I compared my curriculum and knowledge gained with peers
from Columbia, Poly Tech, and Pace. In most cases the complexity of material and effort
involved in completing my assigned exceeded that of my peers. 

Nice things were said about Rich McKenna, but otherwise individual faculty were not
mentioned, except for the following anonymous hero...

One time, Professor [I forgot his name] jumped on a classroom chair, pointed to another
chair, and exclaimed "I AM A POINTER!!"  Then he went on to explain all the different
attributes of a pointer and how it relates to him standing on a chair and pointing
(going into detail about the address and where in memory it is stored).  After that day,
I understood very well what a pointer is and how to use it effectively and efficiently. 
After that day, I never made a mistake with pointers neither in a test, nor in this
real world (where pointers are rarely used anyway).  This is because of the way he brought
the concept of a pointer to life.  Creativity should be pushed more. 




--- Not so nice things people said included:

- The overall experience I had in Stony Brook with the CS program was a difficult one.
Although the struggle was bitter-sweet, I feel alot of it was unnecessary.

- Recommend for a transfer student but not a begineer because of early stages

- The program needs to promote and support student success more, not work against the students