Computer Science: Software Development (CSSD-AS)

The curriculum includes a foundation of core courses in database development and programming languages, and permits students to select major electives that are best suited to their career goals and interests. This flexibility will enable the College better to prepare students for employment in a fast-moving field.

The Associate of Science in Software Development provides a solid general education as well as a thorough coverage of the topics and skills supporting the dynamic information technology field. Programmatic goals relate to the mission in the following manner:

• provide students with skills needed to gain entry level or higher employment;
• provide students with appropriate educational experiences that give them the written, verbal, and interpersonal skills necessary to function as a team member in the IT environment as well as transfer to higher level institutions;
• provide students with course work and experience that improves on existing skills or develops new ones; and
• work in partnership with business and industry in responding to the employment and training needs in the field of information technology.

The program serves both traditional first-time students as well as professionals currently working in the field. The curriculum is flexible enough to meet the needs of students who wish to transfer to a baccalaureate institution and students preparing for immediate entry into the workplace.

Learning Outcomes:

• Upon successful completion of this degree graduates will be able to:
• Demonstrate an understanding of connections between various platforms and programming languages;
• Work with and study the underlying technologies that support the internet;
• Demonstrate the ability to use an IDE (integrated development environment);
• Demonstrate the use of OOP (object-oriented programming) techniques in program design and development;
• Demonstrate writing, compiling and executing code in Object Oriented programming languages;
• Test programs and troubleshoot simple problems;
• Understand relational database design methodology and be able to use database software to build, modify, and query relational databases; and
• Produce logical software solutions to problems.