I would love some feedback on the CS department at Denison. DS is interested in studying CS but is attracted to the idea of being at a small LAC. Anyone BTDT at Denison? Pros and cons for their department?
We know some kids who are majors and have had excellent experiences and loved their classes and profs. I have seen blurbs about several students got competitive internships at Amazon and were hired for after graduation, but I don’t know if they were all CS students. Have you looked at the department website to compare course offerings to other schools you are considering? We also know Comp Sci majors at our flagship, and the breadth of offerings there – of course, as a major research institution – is staggering, though a student at the flagship needs to be a real go-getter to connect with faculty, get involved in research, internships etc. At Denison, that access and mentoring is really part of the fabric of the school.
I’m currently a CS and psych double major at Denison and I would definitely recommend the CS program. As for pros and cons:
Pros: All of the professors are very enthusiastic about what they teach. Class sizes are very small, so it’s easy to get personal attention from a professor and I’ve dropped by office hours before just to talk or toss around ideas. Professors are interested in extracurricular activities-I just participated in a programming contest that we put on annually among the other Ohio LACs, and there are other activities going on too. Denison as a whole is very aggressive about internships and research opportunities, and a lot of upper class CS majors have done their own research with a faculty mentor.
Cons: The only one I can think of is that the department is small, and because of that the electives for upper class students tend to rotate each year, so you have to be aggressive about taking prerequisites if you want specific electives. That also means that we have less electives than a big state school, so you won’t have multiple specific “tracks” for upper level classes. That said the program is growing and will probably get more popular because of the new data analytics major which includes several CS classes.