UMBC computer science degree comes to Shady Grove
New offering brings highly regarded program to more students
by Megan Hanks
UMBC will now offer an undergraduate degree program in computer science at the Universities at Shady Grove, a Montgomery County campus that UMBC shares with eight other Maryland public universities. This is the first of several planned undergraduate programs from UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology that have been approved to be offered at Shady Grove, which also offers UMBC graduate and certificate programs in cybersecurity and data science.
The University System of Maryland and Shady Grove have been working to bring STEM programs like computer science to Montgomery County, which has a strong tech industry. Offering this program at Shady Grove reflects UMBC’s commitment to the state’s economic development and helping students access career opportunities, explains Allison Jones, director of program and partnership development in UMBC’s Division of Professional Studies.
Anupam Joshi, professor and chair of computer science and electrical engineering at UMBC, explains that the UMBC-Shady Grove program will match the current, popular undergraduate computer science program at UMBC’s main campus. This new offering brings UMBC’s highly regarded faculty and curriculum to a larger number of students in an area with high demand for computer science education.
Given the large number of Montgomery College alumni attending programs at Shady Grove, UMBC and Montgomery College have worked together closely to align their computer science curricula. This will enable computer science students to seamlessly transfer from Montgomery College to UMBC-Shady Grove. Jeannette Kartchner, former chair of computer science at Montgomery College, has been instrumental in getting the program off the ground. She is now associate program director for computer science at UMBC-Shady Grove.
With undergraduate computer science courses available at two locations, UMBC is poised to address “a huge, unmet demand for computer science education across Maryland,” in a thoughtful way that efficiently utilizes university resources, says Joshi. “We’re excited to bring this innovative program to USG.”