UMBC has developed tracks for students interested in studies in interactive entertainment and game development. The Visual Arts Department has a new undergraduate concentration on Animation and Interactive Media . The CSEE Department has a new track within the Computer Science program on Game Development . Both departments plan to begin offering these programs in the Fall of 2007.

We believe that this track will prepare a Computer Science major for technical positions in the game industry. At the same time, it emphasizes fundamentals that will be equally valuable in other types of positions. Students must complete all CMSC BS requirements plus...

• Science courses must include
  
  • PHYS 121: Introductory Physics I
    
• GFR/GEP courses must include
  
  • ART 380: History and Theory of Games (new course)
    
• CMSC 400-level electives must include
  
  • CMSC 435: Computer Graphics
    
  • CMSC 471: Artificial Intelligence
    
  • CMSC 493: Capstone Games Group Project (new course)
    The computer games capstone course is designed to allow students completing the computer science games track to engage in a complete group project development experience.  This will help them to integrate the various technical concepts they have learned in earlier courses.  The course aims to impart foundation in team leadership and project management ability that will allow graduates to function effectively as part of multi-disciplinary teams.

   

  •  and two of the following
    
    • CMSC 437: Graphical User Interface Programming
    • CMSC 445: Software Engineering
    • CMSC 455: Numerical Computation
    • CMSC 461: Databases
    • CMSC 481: Networks
    • CMSC 483: Parallel Processing
    • others with permission (contact olano@umbc.edu)

   

New Courses in Computer Science

CMSC 426  Principles of Computer Security [3]

This course will provide an introduction to computer security with specific focus on the computing aspects.  Topics covered will include:  Basics of computer security including an overview of threat, attack and adversary models; social engineering; essentials of cryptography; traditional computing security models; malicious software; secure programming; operating system security in practice; trusted operating system design; public policy issues including legal, privacy and ethical issues; network and database security overview.

CMSC 487  Introduction to Network Security [3]

The objective of this course is to teach the fundamental concepts, architectures and protocols related to network security.  Topics covered include:  Overview of network security; basics of cryptography; threat models; authentication and authorization mechanisms and standards; public key infrastructure; electronic mail security; network layer security; transport layer and web security; packet filtering, firewalls intrusion detection and virtual private networks; and recent topics in network security.