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The University of Utah claimed its spot in tech history as one of the four original nodes of the computer network that later evolved into the internet.

But 50 years later, the states flagship school doesnt have any dedicated space for the thousands of students who want to study computer science and be part of the next big development.

We have students interested, and graduates are really in demand, said Richard Brown, dean of the U.s College of Engineering, which includes the School of Computing. We just dont have adequate places to put them so that they can learn.

Its an acute problem for the biggest major on campus and in a state where the tech economy is the fastest growing in the country, according to one recent report. With the expansion of Silicon Slopes, its become a $20-billion-a-year industry here.

We certainly dont want to limit the number of students, Brown added.

The U. is working on a solution now that, like a computer, will involve some 1s and 0s. It announced last week that it received a $15 million donation as the starting funds to construct a $120 million building to finally house computer science students, giving them their own space for the first time decades after the university connected to the ARPANET in 1969.

(University of Utah) This is an initial building design for a new home for computer science students at the University of Utah.

The historic gift is the largest ever for the College of Engineering, coming from the prominent Price family known for its business acumen, whose patriarch is also an engineering alumnus (as well as a former U.S. ambassador).

We are pleased to lend our support to this effort that is so crucial to Utahs expanding economy, John Price said in a statement, with the funds coming jointly from him and his wife, Marcia.

The demand for graduates is so high, in fact, that Utah Valley University followed the announcement by unveiling its own competitive plans days later to also build a new engineering building on its campus in Orem. And thats still not enough to fill all the open jobs here in the field.

Together, the U. and UVU have about 3,400 computer science students with the U. having the larger share of 2,000 of those.

The fundraising campaign there will be led by three notable engineering alumni who have left their marks: John Warnock of Adobe, Ed Catmull of Pixar and Shane Robison, who has led at Apple, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Fusion-io.

The hope is that the next and bigger generation of computer science students wont be completing their studies in random rooms across campus like they did.

Last fall, the introductory computer programming class at the U. had 465 students. That was a record until this fall.

This semester, there are 696 students enrolled. Thats a 50% increase an additional 231 students interested in the program in just one years time, Brown said.

Its really exponential growth, he added. It keeps getting bigger and bigger every year.

The school has an engineering building named after Warnock that was built in 2007. Thats filled up by the six other engineering departments in the college (apart from computer science), which also have all expanded.

The computer science students were using the 61-year-old Merrill Engineering Building, but its literally falling apart and the classrooms are much too small. Graduate students in the program continue to use those making do with space that predates the World Wide Web with up to 200 students in a class.

(University of Utah) This archive photo from 1970 shows the computer center of the University of Utah. In 1969, the university became one of the four original nodes of the ARPANET, the computer network that eventually spawned the Internet of today.

But the undergraduate cohort has completely outgrown it. So they have been shuffled off to other classrooms across campus, mostly in the social and behavioral health building.

The auditoriums still arent big enough there, either even with the group split in half. Students are sitting on the floor and in the aisles to fit in, Brown said. The collapsible tables, meant for taking notes, also dont have enough space to put a computer making them pretty much moot for the work theyre doing. And the technology connections there are older than anything theyre studying.

Its just a mess, Brown said. Its not working. We need space. Were out of space.

The computer science and computer engineering programs there, combined, enroll nearly 2,000 students total. (Computer engineering overlaps with some of the computer science classes, so theyre often counted together though they are separate fields.)

Some students are getting frustrated and dropping the program or transferring because they cant get into classes or they cant learn effectively even when they do. And there are more students that have expressed interest, too, but have held off. Its stymying.

Even with the limitations, the U. still graduates the most tech workers of any higher education institution in the state. Of the eight public colleges and universities here, it accounts for 46% of the degrees in computer science or computer engineering.

UVU comes in close, with 1,435 students, combined, in computer science and engineering technology. It has another 830 students in information systems and technology and technology management.

Both schools believe expanding and creating space for those students will allow them to excel and attract more to a field hungry for software programmers and technicians.

The way Brown sees it, its a cycle that wont stop turning any time soon.

The more students we graduate in this field, the more the industry hires, the more the companies grow and the more graduates they need, he said.

Brown said students being cramped or pushed aside doesnt serve the states economy and the talent thirsty tech businesses that are increasingly driving it. That has shifted immensely in the last 15 to 20 years. And Brown thinks it will grow even bigger and faster in the next decade.

A report this year from Cyberstates, which monitors the industry across the country, shows that Utahs tech sector accounts for 12% of the states economy and 10% of the workforce employing 152,000 people, including accountants and managers and sales people, in addition to engineers.

It also cites Utahs Silicon Slopes in Utah County as the fastest growing tech sector in the nation. This year alone, it is expected to expand by 6%. There are currently 8,132 businesses.

Brown said hes talked with tech leaders here who have told him theyre starting offices in other states or recruiting for employees elsewhere because they cant find enough in Utah. There are 4,000 unfilled positions here, according to UVU, with four times as many jobs as there are computer science graduates each year in the state.

Silicon Slopes leaders, for their part, have pushed for more computer science education.

It actually becomes a constraint on the growth of companies here, Brown said. And we can help. Its an exciting time to be in engineering and computer science and in Utah.

Work still needs to be done to diversify the workforce and bring in other voices to tech. Utahs computer science workers are 1% Black, compared to 2% in other occupations; 7% Latino, compared to 13%; and 21% women compared to 46%, according to Cyberstates.

Brown said that will be a large part of the initiative to expand.

At UVU, a $25 million donation for its building is coming from Scott Smith, the co-founder of Qualtrics, a Provo-based customer-experience software vendor, along with his wife, Karen. (The other co-founder of Qualtrics is Ryan Smith, now the owner of the Utah Jazz basketball team).

UVU President Astrid Tuminez said in a statement that the generosity will benefit thousands of students many yet to be born. They will change peoples lives and help fill a critical need to increase the number of engineers in Utah now and in the future.

The Orem university also said that space is a premium there, with hallways being converted into meeting spaces for computer science students and professors and no real spaces designed for the technology they need and use.

(Utah Valley University) An initial rendering of the new engineering building that will come to Utah Valley University, with construction expected to be done by fall 2025.

With a new building on its campus, the U. anticipates it will be able to double its number of computer science and engineering graduates, with 3,200 for the first year the new space is open an expected completion timeline is set for fall 2024. It will include a financial technology center and an area specializing in cyber security. (It currently has a data science center that has no home.)

There will also be more opportunities to learn about artificial intelligence and robotics, seen as the next frontier in the business.

UVUs building will likely open a year later, in fall 2025. Both schools will seek funding from the state Legislature, as well as from donors.

That means, for both schools, there will be one more freshman class likely finishing their degrees before the construction is complete.

Still, it fulfills a mission that the state really started investing in at the start of 2000, Brown said, under then-Gov. Mike Leavitt who famously vowed to spend more time in Silicon Valley then, studying how it was structured, than the governor of California did.

At that time, Leavitt sat down with Warnock, who was working there, and asked how to make Utah just as attractive for the industry. Warnock pushed the governor to focus on education for computer science. Student interest tripled from then to today. (Even Warnock moved back here.)

Now, they just need more space to teach them.

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$15 million to the University of Utah and $25 million to Utah Valley University will expand computer science programs - Salt Lake Tribune

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If youve been thinking about a career in computing, a free program being launched by Startup Tucson and Arizona Forge may help you figure out if a job in cyberspace is for you. The nonprofit startup business group and Arizona Forge a University of Arizona entrepreneurship center and business incubator are a launching the basic computer-science course at their shared space in the historic Roy Place building downtown. Applications are open now for the first of two planned 11-week sessions of the Computer Science and Career Services Program, also known as [CS]2. The program will initially run in four-hour sessions on Saturdays from late January through mid-March, using an introductory computer-science curriculum developed at Harvard University. An online informational session is set for Nov 16. To register for the session or apply to the program, go to

. The program, which is being funded by the city of Tucson, was launched as a pilot to help fill a local need for computer programmers and software developers, said Dre Thompson, executive vice president of Startup Tucson. We are constantly under-resourced and understaffed for developers in our area and this is a huge issue our startups face, Thompson said.

The [CS]2 course is designed for beginners with no computer programming experience and is based on Harvards Computer Science 50 (CS50), a basic-computing course taught in person at Harvard and Yale and widely used online, topping 2 million enrollments last year. The curriculum includes the basics of programming languages starting with Scratch, a visual-based language often used by beginners, and progressing to the basics of other common coding languages. While the course is free and open to anyone 18 and older, students can earn an optional verified certificate of course completion through the Harvard program at a cost of $150. A certificate from the program wont qualify graduates for junior developers immediately but will help them decide if computer science work is for them and decide their next steps, said Arizona Forge program coordinator Aleshia Howell. The mission is to demystify computer science, help participants identify their strengths and interests in software development, and then help put them on a path to whatever their goals are, said Howell, who headed a computer coding program in Savannah, Georgia, a few years ago and joined Forge in July. Organizers hope to sign up 12 to 18 students for the initial course and again for a second session from April through June, with a goal of at least 20 program graduates, Howell said.

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Free Tucson course teaches basics of computing to attract new workers - Arizona Daily Star

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The demand for computing-related training is at an all-time high. At MIT, there has been a remarkable tide of interest in computer science programs, with heavy enrollment from students studying everything from economics to life sciences eager to learn how computational techniques and methodologies can be used and applied within their primary field.

Launched in 2020, the Common Ground for Computing Education was created through the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing to meet the growing need for enhanced curricula that connect computer science and artificial intelligence with different domains. In order to advance this mission, the Common Ground is bringing experts across MIT together and facilitating collaborations among multiple departments to develop new classes and approaches that blend computing topics with other disciplines.

Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and the chairs of the Common Ground Standing Committee Jeff Grossman, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor of Environmental Systems; and Asu Ozdaglar, deputy dean of academics for the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the MathWorks Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science discuss here the objectives of the Common Ground, pilot subjects that are underway, and ways theyre engaging faculty to create new curricula for MITs class of computing bilinguals.

Q: What are the objectives of the Common Ground and how does it fit into the mission of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing?

Huttenlocher: One of the core components of the college mission is to educate students who are fluent in both the language of computing and that of other disciplines. Machine learning classes, for example, attract a lot of students outside of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) majors. These students are interested in machine learning for modeling within the context of their fields of interest, rather than inner workings of machine learning itself as taught in Course 6. So, we need new approaches to how we develop computing curricula in order to provide students with a thorough grounding in computing that is relevant to their interests, to not just enable them to use computational tools, but understand conceptually how they can be developed and applied in their primary field, whether it be science, engineering, humanities, business, or design.

The core goals of the Common Ground are to infuse computing education throughout MIT in a coordinated manner, as well as to serve as a platform for multi-departmental collaborations. All classes and curricula developed through the Common Ground are intended to be created and offered jointly by multiple academic departments to meet common needs. Were bringing the forefront of rapidly-changing computer science and artificial intelligence fields together with the problems and methods of other disciplines, so the process has to be collaborative. As much as computing is changing thinking in the disciplines, the disciplines are changing the way people develop new computing approaches. It cant be a stand-alone effort otherwise it wont work.

Q: How is the Common Ground facilitating collaborations and engaging faculty across MIT to develop new curricula?

Grossman: The Common Ground Standing Committee was formed to oversee the activities of the Common Ground and is charged with evaluating how best to support and advance program objectives. There are 29 members on the committee all are faculty experts in various computing areas, and they represent 18 academic departments across all five MIT schools and the college. The structure of the committee very much aligns with the mission of the Common Ground in that it draws from all parts of the Institute. Members are organized into subcommittees currently centered on three primary focus areas: fundamentals of computational science and engineering; fundamentals of programming/computational thinking; and machine learning, data science, and algorithms. The subcommittees, with extensive input from departments, framed prototypes for what Common Ground subjects would look like in each area, and a number of classes have already been piloted to date.

It has been wonderful working with colleagues from different departments. The level of commitment that everyone on the committee has put into this effort has truly been amazing to see, and I share their enthusiasm for pursuing opportunities in computing education.

Q: Can you tell us more about the subjects that are already underway?

Ozdaglar: So far, we have four offerings for students to choose from: in the fall, theres Linear Algebra and Optimization with the Department of Mathematics and EECS, and Programming Skills and Computational Thinking in-Context with the Experimental Study Group and EECS; Modeling with Machine Learning: From Algorithms to Applications in the spring, with disciplinary modules developed by multiple engineering departments and MIT Supply Chain Management; and Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering during both semesters, which is a collaboration between the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Department of Mathematics.

We have had students from a range of majors take these classes, including mechanical engineering, physics, chemical engineering, economics, and management, among others. The response has been very positive. It is very exciting to see MIT students having access to these unique offerings. Our goal is to enable them to frame disciplinary problems using a rich computational framework, which is one of the objectives of the Common Ground.

We are planning to expand Common Ground offerings in the years to come and welcome ideas for new subjects. Some ideas that we currently have in the works include classes on causal inference, creative programming, and data visualization with communication. In addition, this fall, we put out a call for proposals to develop new subjects. We invited instructors from all across the campus to submit ideas for pilot computing classes that are useful across a range of areas and support the educational mission of individual departments. The selected proposals will receive seed funding from the Common Ground to assist in the design, development, and staffing of new, broadly-applicable computing subjects and revision of existing subjects in alignment with the Common Grounds objectives. We are looking explicitly to facilitate opportunities in which multiple departments would benefit from coordinated teaching.

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3 Questions: Blending computing with other disciplines at MIT - MIT News

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LANHAM, Md., Nov. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), a global leader in education technology, today announced a new partnership with the National University of Singapore School of Computing (NUS Computing) to create a portfolio of new GetSmarter professional programs in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), business analytics, fintech/blockchain, digital transformation, and product management/strategy. The partnership will provide professionals across the globe the opportunity to learn new skills from one of the world's leading computing schools.

The twelve new short courses in development aim to build depth and breadth in key disciplines and include AI in Finance, Crypto and Digital Currencies, and Digital Transformation Strategies. While all courses can be taken individually, NUS Computing is also exploring combining various courses to create learning pathways for students in each discipline.

"NUS Computing provides our students with an exceptional educational experience across all of our programs, many of which are some of the most in-demand technology and business skills needed in today's world," said Professor Mohan Kankanhalli, dean of NUS Computing. "Our partnership with 2U is very important for our long-term digital executive education strategy, providing new learning opportunities for our students around the world."

COVID-19 has underscored the importance of digital transformation for businesses and highlighted new and emerging topics that organizations will prioritize in the search for competitive talent in a post-pandemic world. Professionals around the world need flexible training programs to help meet this demand while advancing their job prospects and career growth.

With these new short courses, 2U and NUS are giving professionals access to the critical skills training needed by today's corporations.

"NUS Computing is at the forefront of advances in information technology, computer science, and computer engineering research, creating graduates that go on to be leaders in their fields," said Andrew Hermalyn, president of global partnerships at 2U. "We're honored to be working alongside such a distinguished group of faculty and global practitioners to make 2U-powered short courses from this respected institution available to learners worldwide."

Each of NUS Computing's short courses, which are expected to be available in 2022, will be five to eight weeks long and are open enrollment with no prerequisites. To learn more, visit https://2u.com/partners/nus/

About 2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU)Eliminating the back row in higher education is not just a metaphorit's our mission. For more than a decade, 2U, Inc., a global leader in education technology, has been a trusted partner and brand steward of great universities. We build, deliver, and support more than 550 digital and in-person educational offerings, including graduate degrees, professional certificates, boot camps, and GetSmarter short courses. Together with our partners, 2U has positively transformed the lives of more than 350,000 students and lifelong learners. To learn more, visit 2U.com. #NoBackRow

MEDIA CONTACT:2U, Inc:Kate Welk[emailprotected]

SOURCE 2U, Inc.

http://2u.com

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2U Announces Partnership with the National University of Singapore, One of Asia's Top-Ranked Global Universities, to Expand Online Professional...

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