Daniel Webster College Computer Science Bucks the Trend

(Nashua, NH) December 10, 2007 - While the trend among colleges and universities across the country in the matriculation of computer science students is precipitously declining by 50%, New Hampshire's Daniel Webster College (DWC) is seeing an 250% enrollment explosion.

Surveys and studies confirm that computer science - and all the cutting-edge technology from the military and start-up companies that depend on higher education to provide the emerging employee resources they require - is not the "hot bed" of student recruitment at many institutions that it once was.

Daniel Webster College, however, is having quite the opposite experience. A leader in focusing on those professions the US has fallen behind internationally - science, technology, engineering, and math-related (STEM) disciplines - the College's Computer Science, Information Systems, Gaming and Robotics Division is seeing an enrollment boom, according to Division Chair Thomas Goulding.

Why are high school students with an interest in computer science and new radio and communications technologies choosing Daniel Webster College, a young institution with a day student population of about 750? Because DWC is where it's at! said Goulding.

There is tremendous energy within the division, he said. This comes not only from highly motivated and engaged students, but from dynamic faculty, new program development, national agency grants, and "big name" employers who are knocking on the division's doors for interns, and, especially, Daniel Webster Computer Science graduates. Think the likes of BAE Systems, Electronic Arts, and the National Security Agency.

"In our programs, we are creating 'top gun' graduates that the best companies want to hire," said Goulding.

Daniel Webster's computer science faculty are conducting new technology research in software radio, in a MANET and OPNET Network Design lab, and "active" health records that improve therapeutic efficiency with the real-time use of medical information and compliance databases. And they are involving student research assistants to work with them.

Additionally, faculty are garnering thousands of dollars in grant money to support these activities, new programs (advanced wireless and software radio), and new equipment.

Professor Goulding, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida and has been a faculty member at DWC for seven years, has been the recipient of several Microsoft grants; the most recent 2007 XNA grant for $50,000 will equip a gaming lab at the College. He was also recently named an Electronic Arts (EA) Scholar - a prestigious recognition from a leader in the gaming industry - for his research into the use of computer game development to attract women and/or underrepresented populations to the study of Computer Science and Engineering. A collaboration between Microsoft Corporation and Electronic Arts, the EA Scholar program provides for Goulding's participation in the Microsoft Corporation Game Development in Computer Science Education Conference slated for February 2008.

Goulding also presented a paper in November, "Complex Game Development: A Case Study in Rapid Software Development by Novice Programmers," with colleague Rita M. DiTrolio at The International Association of Science and Technology for Development (IASTED) at MIT.

DWC Professor Jeffrey E. Smith, of Composable Logic, a company whose mission is to mission to improve the quality of complex applications through model refinement and validation, was chair of the 11^th international IASTED conference on Software Engineering and Applications at MIT and editor of the 600-page publication of the conference's proceedings.

He was also awarded a $70,000 renewable annual grant from the Air Force Research Laboratory to work on next generation visualization for Air Force training simulators, work he will bring to Daniel Webster College. This is in addition to a National Science Foundation grant, in partnership with Virginia Tech, to work on next generation software architecture.

Dr. Smith's 30 year engineering track record includes research in fields such as software radio, secure network protocols, operating systems, simulation, multi-sensor fusion random optimization, formal methods, and agent and object-oriented software engineering domains. He holds master degrees in computer science and engineering management and a Ph.D. in computer systems engineering.