Below is a list of all the CSC 275: Mini Course in Computer Science topics that the Computer Science Department has offered in the past few years. These courses satisfy free elective requirements and their content is specialized to various sub-fields of computer science.
Spring 2026: Digital Problem Solvers: An Introduction to AI Automation, Sejong Yoon
This mini-course introduces students of all majors to modern AI-aided software development and workflow automation. Students will learn how to utilize current AI tools to quickly develop computational solutions for high-level, real-world problems. Time permitting, students will also learn how to utilize open-source options to help them make informed decisions regarding the reduction of development, usage, and maintenance costs when using AI agents.
Spring 2024 & 2023: Introduction to Data Science, Mark Russo
This elective mini course exposes students to the field of Data Science with an emphasis on analysis and application. Students are introduced to the professional Data Science toolkit and provided with ample opportunities to practice skills using large data sets. Topics to be covered include data wrangling, data storage, data visualization, and fundamentals of machine learning, including linear modeling, clustering, and dimensionality reduction. The course will emphasize intuitive understanding over deep mathematical foundations.
Spring 2022: Test Development for Computer Scientists, Sean Devlin
This course covers the theory and application of automated tests written by modern software developers from startups to enterprise. Students will gain hands-on experience in designing, writing and executing automated tests to help secure, harden and stabilize their applications.
Spring 2021: Introduction to Data Science, Ron Ammar
With the torrent of large datasets flowing in the public and private domains, the need to understand trends and make informed decisions has yielded the discipline commonly referred to as Data Science. The objective of Data Science is to transform, visualize and interpret large collections of information to generate knowledge and drive decisions and strategy. In this course we will learn how to go from retrieving data to developing an interactive web-based app to showcase trends and extract knowledge.
Fall 2020: Command Line Tools for the Modern Developer, Sean Devlin
This course covers command line tools used by modern development teams from startups to enterprise. It’s the course that helps you to understand and apply the commands and scripts that historically you may have copied and pasted into the terminal but will have to know when you get into the real world. Students will gain hands-on experience in terminal commands, shell scripting, and popular command line interface (CLI) tools like git, aws and docker.
Spring 2020: Introduction to Data Science, Ron Ammar
With the torrent of large datasets flowing in the public and private domains, the need to understand trends and make informed decisions has yielded the discipline commonly referred to as Data Science. The objective of Data Science is to transform, visualize and interpret large collections of information to generate knowledge and drive decisions and strategy. In this course we will learn how to go from retrieving data to developing an interactive web-based app to showcase trends and extract knowledge.
Spring 2019: Introduction to Data Science, Sean Devlin
With the torrent of large datasets flowing in the public and private domains, the need to understand trends and make informed decisions has yielded the discipline commonly referred to as Data Science. The objective of Data Science is to transform, visualize and interpret large collections of information to generate knowledge and drive decisions and strategy. In this course we will learn how to go from retrieving data to developing an interactive web-based app to showcase trends and extract knowledge.