Skip Section Navigation

BRAID faculty

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) has outlined the following action items as its mission for the BRAID initiative:

  1. Revamping intro courses. CS Principles (CSPrinciples.org) is a framework, supported by the National Science Foundation, to provide a curriculum that will encourage both more students and more diversity among students of computer science in high schools, which should lead to more students and diversity in college and university computer science programs as well.
  2. Creating double majors (e.g. CS and bio). UNT has recently established an undergraduate concentration in Computational Life Sciences to introduce undergraduate students in computer science to problems that originate in the life sciences. Past offering of these courses have shown significant interest by women and minorities, however, it is often difficult for students to break out of their traditional curriculum to explore new areas. CSE commits to work with other departments in the life sciences (such as biology, chemistry, environmental science, and geography) to introduce their students to computational approaches rooted in computer science.
  3. Building community and confidence. CSE will continue to serve as Bronze Sponsors of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing and CSE will send the students involved in this program to these two conferences.
  4. Outreach to high school students and teachers. CSE has several initiatives in this area.
    1. In an attempt to increase the number of qualified computer science teachers in secondary schools, our department has received final state approval in the past academic year to prepare students to become teachers of secondary computer science as part of the established UNT Teach North Texas program.
    2. CSE will seek to increase interest in Computer Science for high school students and freshman by engaging them in Software Testing Competitions.
    3. CSE has been hosting a variety of Computer Science‐related summer camp programs for more than 10 years. The activities at these camps have included Robotics, Mobile App Development, Engineering Design, Alice Programming, Video Game Development and a variety of other IT skills.