Reflective Curriculum Review for Liberal Arts Computing Programs

The ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI curricula task force is currently developing an updated set of Computer Science Curricula guidelines, referred to as CS2023. Information about the task force and preliminary drafts of the Knowledge Areas that will be included in the guidelines can be found online at http://csed.acm.org. To assist institutions in applying the new guidelines, CS2023 will also publish a Curricular Practices Volume. This volume will include an article by the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges (SIGCSE-LAC Committee) that will focus on designing or revising CS curricula in liberal arts contexts. Liberal arts colleges, and smaller colleges in general, face unique challenges when designing curricula. Small faculty sizes, limits on the number of courses that can be required for a major and the need for flexibility in student programs of study constrain designs. However, these environments also provide the opportunity to craft distinctive curricula fitted to institutional mission, departmental strengths, locale, student populations and unique academic experiences. These challenges and opportunities, combined with the size of prior curricular recommendations, have often forced smaller programs to assess trade-offs between achieving full coverage of curricular recommendations and their other priorities.