University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department | Hacker News Reader

University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department

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124 pointsk3dz71 comments

I graduated from UF in 2007 and have in no way since kept up with departmental politics, but as of then, CISE was a bit of a Frankenstein creature. As an undergraduate, if you were looking for a computing-related degree, you had five possible majors to choose from:

* Computer Science (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; CISE Department)

* Computer Engineering with Software Emphasis (College of Engineering; CISE Department)

* Computer Engineering with Hardware Emphasis (College of Engineering; ECE Department)

* Electrical Engineering (College of Engineering; ECE Department)

* Computer Information Sciences (College of Business; CISE Department).

So basically, the CISE department was answerable to three different colleges, and some of those colleges offered very-closely-related degrees that weren't in the CISE department.

As for myself, I started out in Computer Engineering with Software Emphasis. I later switched to Computer Science. The reason for this change was that I wanted to double in Mathematics, which belongs to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Having a double major is a lot easier when both majors are in the same college, because you then don't have to worry about satisfying conflicting and redundant gen. ed. requirements.

So, as a CISE alumnus, I have a vested interest in maintaining the reputation of that department, and this reorganization sounds likely to damage it. However, the status quo (as of 2007) is a mess, and this change might overall be for the better.

That's funny because I graduated from UF in 1996 and computer degrees were just about as confusing back then.

I'm also a 2007 alum, and I steered clear of CS as an undergraduate because of the confusing organization you describe above. If that organization wasn't so confusing, I would have tried CS out (vs. the econ BA I hold right now and the MSCS I'm working on now).

The department may have problems, but shutting down research throws the baby out with the bathwater. Degree consolidation would go a long way to improving student enrollment.

It's not obvious that they're actually "shutting down" any research, though. They seem just to be moving it under the aegis of other departments.

All faculty members that remain in CISE will have to stop their research program and focus only on teaching. About 50% of the faculty will be able to continue their research in other departments.

They will also be stopping all departmental TA support.

The proposal is here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzZsds2XcGnMWFpcnFiNEhvQkk/...

I'm about to graduate from UF's eco department. How is your MSCS program treating you? I'm likely going down a similar route.

Also, just a department update: the our department accepted its last PhD class for the foreseeable future this year because of money and declining faculty. Denslow is retiring after this semester.

I can't deny that the department being cut back is a good one. But sometimes there isn't room for all the good departments.

I plant 4 tomato plants every spring. In a few weeks I pull up 2 of them, even if they are thriving. There is only so much soil, water and sunlight to go around.

Great point. After all, computer science is a relatively unimportant discipline. It's obviously a waning field. As we've seen in the news, people with CS degrees don't make much money and almost never get rich, so they are unlikely to donate to schools later on in life.

AsI understand it, there are several CS departments in the college. Several tomato plants.

Tomatoes? EE one of 5 CS department? All the good courses (and one bad one)I had were taught by CISE faculty.

No, they're potatoes. The CISE ones are conveniently chopped into french fries. Turlington's is still raw.

So which had the best football team?

I graduated from UF in 2004. This was the exact reason why I did not pursue a degree in computer science alongside my finance degree. The only course I took in the computer science department (Something like Problem Solving with MS Office) was completely unorganized. I picked up my programming background on my own and in graduate school.

No clarity will result.

The two Computer Engineering Degrees (software and hardware) are to be combined into one that has N (not yet decided) tracks that will be supported by "certificate programs."

So, now you reduce by one clearly defined separation and increse by n-1 less well defined certificate programs.

What of Computer Science? Is that staying under CLAS/CISE?

Why not just have a CE major, with CS and EE minors available?

I graduated in 2002, and the situation was even more convoluted then.

There was no "Computer Science" major available; the traditional CS curriculum was known as "Computer and Information Sciences", which, due to the acronym, can be confused with a MIS-equivalent degree (I once had a manager who insisted that I show him the course catalog for my major to prove I studied the relevant CS topics). The MIS/IT curriculum was offered as "Decision and Information Systems".

And despite the CISE department being a part of the College of Engineering, the CS curriculum was offered as an independent major only by the liberal arts and business colleges. I opted for the business college, so my actual degree is "Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a major in Computer and Information Sciences", wording which is rather poor at conveying that this is indeed a CS degree.

I don't think they got around to renaming the degrees until 2004-2005.

I graduated from UF in 2009, with degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. UF was running into huge budget issues, which they mostly took out on Liberal Arts. At the time, the Computer Science department was under Liberal Arts and Sciences, not engineering.

The department chair at the time, Sartaj Sahni, responded by cutting teaching funding and letting some of the best teachers go. UF had a few teachers without PhDs, which reduces a university's ranking in US News & World Report. Of course, these teachers were the ones that REALLY cared about teaching, since they didn't have research distractions. These teachers were replaced with postdocs who lack the experience needed to teach at a major institution.

I don't know how you can have a solid program if you slash your best teachers to save research, then slash your research to save teaching. Doesn't make sense.

Letting go of your best teachers sounds like a brutally flawed decision. The only reason I am now getting back into learning programming after a 8 year hiatus, is because of how great my untenured lecturer was in teaching us and inspiring us in the ways of C programming.

If not for him, there would be far fewer students from my school who would have stuck with programming. In 2004, we made a facebook group called "Everything I know about C I learned from [insert guy's name]". From what I can tell, the number of former students in this group keeps growing every year. He is beloved by all his current and former students, and I would vehemently protest to the school/department if he ever got cut prematurely for any reason.

If you're talking about Dave, he did get cut prematurely.

What the hell happened? He was the only one that cared.

Fired since he didn't have a PhD

I graduated in 2004 and did NOT like Dave. Too much ego. He cared more about people listening to him talk than learning the material. I know he was loved by others, and am sorry he lost his job.

CISE professors will be able to join EE/ECE.

According to the proposal "Roughly half of the faculty will be offered the opportunity to move to ECE, BME or ISE."

The dean also stated several times and faculty must be accepted into this different dept. So it is not clear who which faculty will be allowed to continue research.

> UF had a few teachers without PhDs, which reduces a university's ranking in US News & World Report.

Does this really happen? This attitude that if you don't have a PhD you must be stupid is incredibly annoying.

Yes it really happened, and yes, the leaders publicly cited it as the reason why. "We must remain competitive in the rankings!"

You know what would be REALLY innovative, if instead on judging the department based on the number of PHDs, they would instead look at the accomplishments of the graduates at 5, 10, 20 and 30 year marks.

There is a community college in Gainesville called Santa Fe (it's now considered a "college" I guess) but their graphic design program had something like a 95 percent job placement IN THAT FIELD.

Well said. I was honored to have you as the programming team pres while I was at UF.

As a 2004 graduate of UF (ECE, not CISE) this news worries me. Can anymore more familiar with the situation explain whether or not this more about consolidating ECE/CISE, or if this is just a simple gutting of the computer science at UF.

Many schools suffer the issue of CS being extra-engineering, and then having a "computer engineering" department within engineering, and you end up with quite a bit of duplication. I'm hoping that this is simply part of a consolidation process.

Yep. University of Calgary went the opposite route a few years back and shut down the computer engineering degree stream. I'm actually not sure what the effects of that were, I'll have to ask my coworkers (some of whom are graduates of that degree).

Are you sure that is what OP is talking about?

U of Calgary still has a software engineering program within engineering, which I think is the situation OP is talking about.

With that said I'm in the computer science program and it is still very computer sciencey so I think we've avoided the duplication.

Yes, the software eng program is still around. There is quite a bit of overlap with comp sci though - unless you're taking an honours degree there will be a number of software eng students in most of your classes (networking, operating systems, etc.)

I think the fate of computer eng was to have it split between computer science and EE. I'll have to ask coworkers at lunch.

Have we met? I'm Andrew Helwer. The guy that runs Problem Solving Club.

That likely is the case, I never do know what programs most of my classmates are in.

We haven't meet but I have heard of you. Last semester a friend in discrete mathematics from bio-info mentioned your problem solving club.

The fertile environment for software tech companies in Gainesville and Florida as a whole will be severely damaged.

Is Gainesville really that fertile a ground for software startups? Moreover, will reducing research funding at University of Florida necessarily make the existing environment for startups worse? For example, what if the savings are invested into a greater emphasis on teaching?

Keep in mind that "software tech companies" is a superset of startups.

Is Gainesville really that fertile a ground for software startups? Moreover, will reducing research funding at University of Florida necessarily make the existing environment for startups worse?

UF has a very strong entrepreneurial community. Grooveshark[0] and Hype Machine[1] were both founded by Gator alums.

I can imagine that reduced research --> lower quality RA opportunities --> reduced interest from undergrads, thus shrinking the number of undergrads interested in CS or tech startups.

[0]http://grooveshark.com/

[1]http://www.hypem.com

I sure wouldn't say fertile, but there's a growing bit of support there for tech startups. UF is generally the big engineering school in Florida, though USF (Tampa) and UCF (Orlando) have gained on it. They're big state schools grinding out undergrads, but it gets a lot harder if you lose all your grad students.

http://innovationgainesville.com

Also, what happens in Gainesville will have no effect on what happens at UCF, FSU etc. Each of those schools are 2 hours drive from each other.

People in Silicon Valley don't worry about what happens in LA.

Is this the same University of Florida that did this: Give a 6 year 24 million contract to a coach of a so called amateur sports team ? http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4374311 Is this the same UF that gets a cut of SEC 2.25 billion dollar contract ? http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2008/08/2008...? Yes I think it is. Hmmm I wonder why they have nothing left for cs education.

Affiliated? Yes. Two separate entities though. They do not receive any funding from the University. In fact the UAA has made a profit consistently for quite a while and has returned $6-8 million/year to the University.

So, yes the UAA gives ridiculous amounts of money to coaches, but they are making a decent ROI.

Also, the $6-8 million given to the University is after the UAA pays for all of the expenses of the non revenue producing sports teams.

The UF football program is profitable so it does not matter how much they spend on their coach or their program.

The CISE program at UF is profitable, so it shouldn't matter how much we spend on our program.

As a 2002 graduate, it pains me to see this. More so, when they are saying that they will cut the TA funding. I got through college because of my TA scholarship, and I still have fond memories of teaching the undergraduates. Some of them are still friends.

We also did some nice research in my Masters, a lot of concepts(Grid/cloud) which we are currently using in our Startup.

In any case, I just hope the department and the University come through this with their reputation intact.

Did you complete undergrad in '02, or were you a TA at that time? I completed my CISE undergrad in '02 and thought it was an excellent program, despite the convoluted organization.

As an aside, what does your degree actually say? The '98 catalog didn't actually have a "computer science" program, and the CS curriculum was offered as "Computer and Information Sciences" via either the business school or CLAS. Do you ever get people confusing your undergrad degree with the equivalent of MIS? (IIRC, the MIS-equivalent was DIS at that time.)

There are over 400 graduate students here in the CISE department at UF. With the cuts to all TA funding plus half the research faculty instantly being forced to stop research in addition to those faculty who do not wish to remain as teaching only faculty there will be 200+ of us graduate students leaving. At over $10,000 a year in tuition, the loss of these 200+ graduate students tuition is far in excess to what the college of engineering as a whole stands to save by consolidating and gutting the department. Next year instead of a $1.3M deficit to plug they will have an additional 2M+ less in tuition revenue alone. I would love to see where the dean decides to turn to next to "consolidate." This is not a sustainable approach to a budget deficit because she is greatly devaluing the degree in the eyes of the current students and we are going to transfer elsewhere to finish our degree programs. She can honestly apply the 5% budget cuts across the board to all departments and let everyone take a small hit or irrevocably damage computer engineering at UF and still have a budget issue.

Seems like the university is deciding to focus on Electrical and Computer Engineering and deemphasize Computer Science.

Core competence and all that.

It even has an odd name like CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering).

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120411/ARTICLES/1204198...

Computer Science programs have many different roots. I think the most common is for them to grow out of Electrical Engineering departments where they end up tightly coupled with Computer Engineering, lots of hardware emphasis, etc. But they can also grow out of departments like math or information / library science. Then they may end up fairly far from the engineering departments.

How on earth is a University doing this in 2012? Just makes no sense at all that you would cut one of the fastest growing fields on earth...

Yeah that name is pretty odd. Oh wait, what's this thing I see at the National Science Foundation?

http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=CISE

as a former UF student, I have to say this just seems like a terrible idea. disappointing.

I really hope that they're simply consolidating Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and CISE (Computer & Information Science Engineering) into a single department and keeping existing faculty.

As a 2010 graduate (CISE - I wanted a mix of engineering and liberal arts), this is quite troubling to me. I remember when they announced that they would be laying off a number of faculty members (mostly lecturers) -- some of whom were the best instructors in the entire department. Now they're getting rid of research in the name of teaching? What a farce.

That's not at all what is proposed.

Step 1: move graduate programs to ECE

Step 2: make faculty ask to be in other departments (with the dean's approval of course)

Step 3: make all faculty who can't get other departments to take them have a 100% teaching appointment and set TA budget of the department to $0. Effectively convincing all those cranky guys you wanted to get rid of to leave the university.

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Success!

Then add the Ph.D. program back in and wait 25 years for it to rebuild.

Sounds like a great plan to me.

For those of you who have a "vested" interest in the reputation of a department you graduated from many years previous (and by many I mean more than a year ago) and are worried about its reflection on you.

Perhaps, instead, you should concern yourself with your personal professional achievements and credentials post graduation and how those reflect on you. To me that seems like a MUCH more productive use of your time.

This seems like a concern to future and current students; rather than alumni.

// Light-hearted jab at UF alumni

Leave it to a Gator grad to be worried about keeping-up appearances.

Go Knights!

I like to take a "vested" interest in my undergrad and my personal acheivements... but even still...

Go Knights!

I think that I've gotten jobs despite, not because of, my UF degree. But the skills that have let me get those jobs were burnished in research labs in the CS department. Research labs that will go away if the dean's plan goes through.

Some of us just don't believe in pulling up the ladder after we've climbed up it. Having an active department turning out competent graduates is good for us as alumni, good for Florida, and good for the field of computer science.

I was planning on transferring to UF next fall to get a bachelors in Computer Science. It worries me how little the university cares about Computer Science if they're planning to make such a decision. I personally would like to thank everyone who signed this for rallying against such actions.

Reddit discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/ufl/comments/s5jsk/uf_engineering_de...

Let us think - how is an engineering department taught by mostly non Engineers? Odd I know, but rumor has it CISE does it. Not so with EE/ECE. BTW, CISE instructors are welcome to join EE/ECE - most of their research is done together already anyway. But hey, who cares about figuring out all of the details, lets just make this a sensation like all the other BS news.

Wat?

"Engineering department taught by non-engineers" You mean because CISE profs don't take the FE/PE? Is it because they haven't taken the order of the engineer oath? What makes one an engineer?

The department is "Computer and Information Science and Engineering" - only a subset of the department consists of what would be generally regarded as "engineering", and the people teaching engineering courses have the relevant expertise in their fields.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Can't imagine university like UF doesn't have CS program.....

Filed under "Flori-duh"

God I hate that state. The most idiots per capita I've ever encountered.

Thank you, Rick Scott!

Easy there, the UofF doesn't need Rick Scott's help to completely blunder something.

I left Gainesville in 2010 and that entire freaking town has one of the most ANTI-progress sentiments I've ever seen.

The one shining star on the horizon will be the construction of the University's 40 acre tech hub. Let's hope they don't flub that one.

40 acre? I thought it was just one building downtown.

They have a powerhouse college football team. That will keep America relevant in the future.

I'm a current UF student, and what the hell?! The presidents of UF and FSU are lobbying the government to allow the universities to increase tuition without limits (ie, without asking the Florida Legislature again), and UF comes out with this? Is this their way of sending a message to the Legislature? "Don't approve our tuition hikes and this will happen"? They're asking for a tuition hike to make UF more "competitive" nationally, but how does eliminating a research department and cutting faculty who are great teachers but not PhD's make you more competitive?

It doesn't!

I'm also a UF student, and would gladly pay more in tuition if it meant saving our department.

I'm in no way associated with UF, but I don't think the answer for why this is proposed is too difficult.

Take this:

  CISE, the only department at UF engaged in Computer Software research, will become 
  a teaching only department, and inevitably, its ranking, reputation and enrollment 
  will plummet.

and add this:

http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120331/ARTICLES/1203399...

Can you say "diploma mill"? Good; I knew you could.

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