Computer science department celebrates ongoing anniversary

This year marks EWU’s computer science department’s 25th anniversary, an event being celebrated throughout the school year.

The computer science department was at the forefront of the computer revolution, and they continue to grow with it. The department was unofficially formed in 1969, but it wasn’t formally recognized until 1984, the year of the Apple Macintosh’s introduction. From then on, the department was authorized to award both Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in computer science.

“In our history, there have been times where Eastern computer science students and faculty have outraced, by several steps, the blistering pace of rapid progress in the field,” Silver Anniversary Coordinator Steve Simmons said.

On Feb. 18, a reception was held in the Computer Science Building for the Professional Advisory Board. The 17-member board helps plan for the future of Eastern’s computer science department, one that will undoubtedly continue to grow at a rapid pace.

According to Simmons, the group includes members from large companies like Itron, medium-sized companies like NextIT, and smaller companies like Maplewood Software.

The board gives advice on planning computer science courses and programs, performing research and projects in the department, providing jobs and internships for students, planning field trips and performing tours, and coordinating visiting speakers, along with preparing many other projects concerning the department.

The reception included a new exhibit in the lobby of the Computer Science Building, which presented the current stage of computer science. The Chair of the department, Dr. Paul Schimpf, discussed enrollment trends and a new initiative to permit each major in computer science areas to complete a full year of project studies in software and systems.

The initiative will be an introductory, one-quarter, basic course. After completion of the first quarter, students will complete a two-quarter sequence in which teams will complete a serious project for a real world client. 

This new sequence will prepare computer science students for professional work in the industry, Simmons said.

This spring, a series of eight speakers will be lecturing on the impact of this field of study.

The speakers will include several EWU alumni who have started both small and large companies, as well as an internationally known expert on computer data visualization and research in computer science.

Further details will be available during the last week of the quarter, as speakers have not yet been matched with suitable dates.

Living in the digital age leaves a lot of students in the dark about the history of computers and how rapidly the industry has grown.

Before 1920, the word “computer”  referred to human clerks who performed computations. From there, the word meant any machine that performed the work of a human “computer.” 

It wasn’t until 1941 that the first general-purpose digital computer was invented.

Some of the inventions that many take advantage of today were introduced only in the last 40 years. E-mail was introduced in 1971, and the personal computer appeared in the late 1970s.

The Eastern computer science department now has a Facebook page to which, Simmons added, they will “add a lot more content ... in the future.”