Changes

In general, we are looking at a couple of things: One was trying to set out a better core curriculum for both programs. The last semester in CNS is basically all professional options. CTY has a "ton" of professional options (which is OK), but then CTY does this divergent thing in their third and fourth semesters, where if a student is starting out in CTY, that person goes into co-op, then decides to graduate from CNS, they are going to miss a couple of things. For example, if we potentially graduate students that have never taken ops335 which is considered a weakness since they are missing a big portion of the OS administration skills. (traditionally and optimally, students in CTY would take OPS435 for scripting skills, then take OPS335 for Linux administration skills).

This will put more emphasis on CTY developing curriculum in the fifth and sixth semester that will have more value that will provide additional skills for the IT industry. Capstone project, involved directly with industry (research, problem solving). This may provide the students with a "carrot" that would be tempted to graduate CNS, but with no job prospects to be channeled tackling a "real IT" related situation as opposed to being inactive (which this "idle period" does not look great on a resume when applying for a job). In other words, students can use this time to develop a sense while working on these capstone projects of what that industry is about and to gain related skills. Streams: hardware, database, operating systems, security sideline stream, cloud, advanced data communication. Although these streams exist with course content, there is opportunity to further develop the courses to complement the capstone project. At the same time there is flexibility for professional options (i-series, tech support) - adding value. Capstone project can encourage students to stay for those 2 semesters (retention).