<p>I thought it wasn't considered engineering but I've noticed a lot of CS threads popping up here, so wondered if I was wrong.</p>
<p>The reason I ask is because I'd like to speak with someone from a national engineering group about whether I could form a chapter at my college, however, my college only offers computer science but does have ECs in engineering and several engineering (mechanical, computer and chemical) research positions for Ugrads.</p>
<p>I'm not sure if they would accept a chapter at my college since technically engineering isn't offered.</p>
<p>No, it isn’t really except in the sense of design. But posting in this forum is better than just posting in a generic ‘other majors’. Unfortunately, CC does not have a separate forum for CS majors. Many colleges include CS (and math) as part of their engineering or science departments anyway.
CE (Computer Engineering) is a related field and this would be an appropriate forum for that too.<br>
Note that the largest society of the IEEE is the Computer Society (they’ve historically changed their name several times so have resisted another name change to reflect this).
The ACM would also be another organization for which you could form a campus chapter if you don’t already have one.</p>
<p>I could go either way on the issue. It’s just as difficult and prestigious, that’s a given. The issue is whether the skills and techniques are similar to the engineering disciplines (i.e. it’s difficult, but in a different way). There’s some cross disciplinary work, but not that much. (e.g. you’ll see mechanical engineering PhDs working in chemical engineering departments, but you rarely see that happen with CS and ECE PhD’s / departments).</p>
<p>Your best bet is to just call and ask the group. Usually, they’ll approve something like this - every group wants to increase membership.</p>
<p>I work for a large software engineering company and the vast majority of the engineers that we hire have CS degrees. You would think that CE would be more common but CE seems to be a newer degree and is what a lot of people are more comfortable with.</p>
<p>What seizes to amaze me is that the ones who say that computer science is not an engineering discipline never consider the fact that computing is the 8th greatest ENGINEERING achievement of the 20th century. The internet is the 13th.</p>
<p>Anything that uses math to implement something is engineering. Therefore, CS is indeed engineering. One is using his knowledge of math to put a program or application to use.</p>
<p>If CS is more relevant to math, why isn’t the CS department part of the mathematics department at universities?</p>
<p>You are entitled to your opinion. I simply disagree with it.</p>
<p>Some universities do have CS in the mathematics department. </p>
<p>The two universities that I went to do not have the CS in the engineering. One has it in the math department, and the other has it in a separate department alongside statistics and informatics.</p>
<p>Strictly speaking, CS is not engineering, because:</p>
<p>1.) You don’t need any actual computers to study CS.
2.) You never have to write a single piece of software to study CS.
3.) You never have to <em>test</em> any algorithm in CS to know that it is correct.</p>
<p>I think the real question is whether Software Engineering is an oxymoron or not. Personally, I feel that software engineering - at least in theory, one day - can and will be universally accepted as an engineering discipline just as the others have been. SE is a new field… give it time to mature.</p>
<p>Actually…my CS prof was ChemE undergrad ;).</p>
<p>I would consider it engineering since here it’s in the college of engineering and you take engineering courses to satisfy requirements. It may be different at other schools.</p>
<p>Auburn I would say the CS you are talking about is more specific to algorithm design…other areas of CS certainly do not fit the 3 bullets you listed.</p>
<p>It’s ok. It’s not really a heated debate. Engineering majors respect CS majors and vice versa. So really it’s just about semantics.</p>
<p>I bet they do let you form a chapter. Like I mentioned, one of the top goals of most national organizations is to increase membership and generate revenue.</p>
I don’t think any of those points are true at most colleges in practice.</p>
<p>If one wants to to go to extremes then an EE doesn’t ever have to use electricity or create a circuit or test any circuit in order to study EE. Ditto with other engineering majors. Good luck to them to try to do anything useful or get hired if they don’t though.</p>
<p>CS is considered engineering by most, is part of the college of engineering at many campuses (not all), and the grads who become software engineers are generally considered ‘engineers’ by their companies.</p>
<p>I think it would be well not to confuse CS the subject with CS the major.</p>
<p>CS the major has SE in it. CS the subject is distinct from SE. CS has nothing to do with engineering, whereas SE has engineering right in the name. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.</p>