Student Graduation Survey on the Undergraduate Computer Science Program

	Spring 2004
        Steven Skiena (scribe)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Gang,
	As part of our ABET acceditation process we have started
an exit survey for our graduating seniors.   I encourage you to
look at the first batch of 14 results at

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

	My analysis of the results is as follows:

-- By a 9 to 7 margin, graduating students would recomment our major
to a student starting college.   I guess we win, but this is probably
not a score to cite in our brochure.   From reading the comments, it
is clear that much of the negative votes are frustrations about the job market
in computer science, but there are other complaints as well (see below)

-- Students had nice things to say about 12 professors, and bad things to
say about 5 professors (some faculty made both lists).   This is not a bad
ratio, considering our usual results.  Multiple students said nice things
about Badr, Lewis, and Stark -- so kudos to them.

--  Students have long memories, and niceties matter.  I was chagrined
to see the following comment about me:

``My first experience asking a question was in CSE 113, Skiena saying in from
of the entire class that he "couldn't believe" I didn't understand something.''

Now obviously I don't remember saying this, and obviously I didn't mean to
hurt the student, but it is clear that whatever off-hand remark I did make
still hurts several years later.   We (me obviously included) need to be
sensitive about what we say to students and how we say it.


-- specific praise:

	specific instructors: Bachmair, Badr (2) , Kelly, Lewis (2), Pawagi,
		C.R. Ramakrishnan, Scarlatos, Skiena, Stark(2), Stent,
		Zadok, Zhao
	courses: CSE308, CSE 336
	several students like the introductory sequence.

-- specific complaints:

	no course on teaching C++, need more C++ earlier
	industry doesn't want Java
	natural science requirement (specifically geology)
	TAs who don't speak English
	too much work
	from ISE majors the program is too similar to CSE
	add public speaking course
	prerequisite structure messed up
	specific instructors: Gupta, Kifer (2), Pawagi, I.V. Ramakrishnan (2),
		Skiena


-- specific suggestions

	Set up a central schedule of dates of assignments/exams in each course
	so faculty can space out the dates.