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[logo]Content [logo]Hip [logo]PSG [logo]SysAdmin [logo]WebDB [logo]Cluster [logo]theory

Research and Applied Groups

The Computer Science Department at Earlham is not solely composed of professors and computer maintenance folk. Students, too, are integral to the running, upkeep, and continued growth of all aspects of the department. In Earlham's applied and research groups, students work together with a faculty advisor to both learn a (sometimes completely new!) skill set and apply it in a way that is useful to the entire CS department and sometimes the whole College. The content applied group, for example, made and maintains this webpage. The applied groups include:

content the Content Administration Group, the wonderful people responsible for the page you are viewing now.
HIP the Hardware Interfacing Project [HIP], who connect us to devices and gadgets
Pedagogy the Pedagogical Tools Group, who generate teaching devices for the lower-level CS courses.
SysAdmin System Administrators, who keep 50+ computers and their associated software running for the use of three departments.
DBA and the WebDB Group, who make looking up your class schedule oh-so-much easier

The research groups are two:

cluster the Cluster Computing Group, who connect many computers to solve large problems
theory and the Theory Group, who are currently studying the parsing of obscure grammar formalisms

Tell me more about Computer Science at Earlham.

Earlham CS is a growing and exciting department. Our excellent faculty and rich facilities provide an environment that fosters an interdisciplinary approach to theory and practice in the field. Computer Science works closely with Mathematics and Physics and has ties to linguistics and logic.

Our curriculum is built on the fundamental paradigms of the discipline: theory, abstraction, and design. These three are woven throughout the Department, binding the sometimes disparate topics of Computer Science into a cohesive body of knowledge and experience. Because of the rapidly changing character of the field, we review the curriculum regularly. Our work is heavily influenced by the liberal arts mission of the College, in particular our interdisciplinary approach and our inclusion of the cultural, legal, and ethical issues surrounding computing within the curriculum. We provide our graduates with the ability to make informed decisions about the appropriate use of technology in a variety of contexts.

At a practical level we rely heavily on open source software, such as Linux, Postgres, and FreeBSD for both teaching and research. Many of our students, faculty, and alums participate in open source software development projects. Eric Raymond, author of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, spoke on campus about the open source movement on January 17, 1999.

There's news in the CS department!

There's weather in the CS department!

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Weather Station: Click for a larger view

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