Agenda for CSE Department Meeting 2-28-24

Council of Chairs Announcements

• Spring25 sabbatical applications due March 15.
• Should we be offering any courses this summer? Now is time to prepare. We have at least one request: CSE 107 requested by a Chem student.
• Time for Fall 24 course requests. Be sure to include all data, e.g. preferred day/time/room, whether it has a final, etc.
• ACT is making various changes, e.g. to the classroom monitors. New training may be advisable before Fall.
• Time on Task
• Scopus vs. Web of Science
• What are our top 3 budget requests?
• Final Exams: if you are not having one, make sure the registrar does not post that you do.

Guidelines for Pay-to-Play Publishers

Please (ask Kim to) put a requisition in place before any work is submitted to the publisher. A memo to the purchasing office will be sufficient to get the requisition in place. In the memo, please have the professor state that they are working on a publication and are requesting a P.O. You can use an amount paid from a previous publication or you can attach a quote from the publishing agency, if they are able to provide one. Kimela advised us that if this process is not followed it is considered an unauthorized purchase and will cause a delay in payment to the publisher.

Teaching Computer Science to Students with Autism

Due to recent developments, I am now looking for resources for understanding how to teach CS to students with autism. Most material on this topic seems to be aimed at children. What can universities do to help autistic adult students?

• Pace University has a Computer Science Inclusion Program, or at least it did in 2019. It is a non-credit certificate program.
• The (SUNY) University at Buffalo has done work on Building Ecosystems of Belonging for Neurodiverse Computer Science Students in their Open Education Research Lab
• Teach for America's 6 Tips
• Nisreen Alkhun wrote an MS thesis titled Understanding Computer Science Students' Characteristics and How They Affect Their Performance in Class. It tested a university cohort's AQ rating and found no correlation between AQ and grades in the intro CS course.
• Ramlah Ilyas wrote an MS thesis titled "An Accessible Computing Curriculum for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)" at Youngstown State University. It uses Brennan's Creative Computing Curriculum (Brennan and Resnick 2012). It seems to be aimed at K-12. That work was followed up by Assessing the Efficacy of an Accessible Computing Curriculum for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders