{"id":2052,"date":"2017-02-14T09:44:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T14:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/?p=2052"},"modified":"2017-02-14T09:44:26","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T14:44:26","slug":"notes-from-department-head-cal-ribbens-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/2017\/02\/14\/notes-from-department-head-cal-ribbens-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Department Head Cal Ribbens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we are seeing a large spike in undergraduate computer science enrollment.\u00a0 There have been two previous spikes in CS, one in the late 80\u2019s (following the debut of the PC) and one in the early 2000\u2019s (the \u201cdot com boom\u201d).\u00a0 So here we go again?\u00a0 Is this another enrollment bubble?\u00a0 This one feels different to me. \u00a0While the current growth rate will surely level out, I believe CS enrollments will be sustainably high for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 Computing is just so pervasive, and a CS degree is such good preparation for deep computational thinking and creative problem solving\u2014exactly what is needed to address virtually all of the most important problems and opportunities society faces today.\u00a0 And as we make progress on broadening participation in our field to include historically under-represented groups, the potential for new talent and growth is even more exciting.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few numbers, to give you a sense of CS undergraduate enrollment trends at Virginia Tech.\u00a0 This year we will award almost 250 bachelor\u2019s degrees, our largest group ever, and almost twice the size of the class that graduated only four years ago.\u00a0 Our current sophomore class numbers 341, a number which ranks second in the College of Engineering, trailing only Mechanical Engineering.\u00a0 The average GPA of this group is an impressive 3.37.<\/p>\n<p>We are thrilled at the number of talented students that are streaming into our field!\u00a0 It is a great privilege to help the next generation build on what has come before.\u00a0 In a future post, I\u2019ll have more to say about the great jobs our students are moving into, and about the exciting growth we are experiencing in other dimensions of the department.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1283\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2015\/12\/Dr.-Ribbens.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"115\" height=\"150\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we are seeing a large spike in undergraduate computer science enrollment.\u00a0 There have been two previous spikes in CS, one in the late 80\u2019s (following the debut of the PC) and one in the early 2000\u2019s (the \u201cdot com boom\u201d).\u00a0 So here we go again?\u00a0 Is this another enrollment bubble?\u00a0 This one feels different [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2052"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2053,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2052\/revisions\/2053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.cs.vt.edu\/csblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}