Welcome

If you have Advanced Placement credit or transfer credit from another college or university, it is important to know how this credit matches with Northeastern courses. This will avoid the unfortunate error of retaking a course that you have credit for.

Credit based on the Advanced Placement examinations requires a grade of 4 or 5. The PDF table at the following link provides the match between specific AP exams and the corresponding Northeastern courses.

Advanced Placement Credit Award Form

Notice one important fact: AP credit in Computer Science will not replace any degree requirements in the CCIS degree programs. As you may see from the discussion of Freshman CCIS Courses above, our program begins in a unique way from the point of view of both concepts and skills. The AP curriculum in CS does not cover this material and students would be at a severe disadvantage if we did apply AP credit to any of these courses. Therefore, AP credit is given for a fictitious course number, CS 1990, which has the effect of granting free elective credit but not CS elective credit.

The same fictitious number, 1990, is used for all foreign language AP credit. If you wish to continue with a foreign language, consult with:

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

For students with transfer credit from another college or university, Admissions processes the credit and makes the course matches based on a large database of historical transfer data. If you happen to have transfer credit for a course that has not been seen before, Admissions will contact the appropriate unit to make an academic evaluation of what course if any will match. In case a course deserves credit but there is no exact match, the magic number 1990 will be used.

You may read the policies regarding transfer credit and access the transfer credit database at the following link:

Transfer Credit Policies and Database

This link will bring you to the transfer credit policies page and a follow-up link will bring you to a large dropdown menu where you may select the college from which you wish to transfer credit. After clicking on the dropdown, type the first few letters of the college name to hone in on the college that you wish.

Note that it is the policy of both the college and the Provost’s Office that students may not take courses for transfer credit after enrolling at Northeastern.

When you come to orientation, please bring a list of AP exams that you have taken where you know for certain or strongly believe that you have received a 4 or 5. Also, if you have transfer credit, please bring an unofficial transcript. With this data, your advisor may check what information is already in the system and what follow up if any needs to be done.

In this section, we give links to the Northeastern undergraduate catalog and the undergraduate course descriptions. At these links, you will find both PDF documents and further links into the Banner course and registration database system. We will defer discussion of Banner until a later section entitled Using The Banner System.

• Access to the Northeastern Undergraduate Catalog
  • The catalog contains general information about the university as a whole including admissions, expenses, academic policies, the NU Core, Honors, experiential learning, and cooperative education. The catalog also contains detailed academic information about the degree programs in the various colleges and requirements for majors and minors.
• Access to the Northeastern Undergraduate Course Descriptions
  • The course descriptions include the paragraph length summary of each course together with prerequisite information and notations about which degree requirements may be satisfied by that course if any.

The Northeastern University Core or NU Core was approved in April 2006 and implemented in Fall 2007. The NU Core encapsulates all university-wide undergraduate requirements. Certain NU Core courses make good options for freshman electives but some care must be taken to be sure that a particular Core category is not already satisfied by some specific required course in the degree program or by AP or transfer credit. We will clarify this issue partly in this section and partly in the section below on Selecting Electives.

Here is the web link to the registrar site for general information on the NU Core:

• NU Core Summary

More detailed information on the NU Core may be found via the catalog and course description links in the previous section. The later section on Using The Banner System will lead to tutorials that will explain how to perform searches that will return detailed information about specific NU Core courses or collections of such courses.

We will now list the NU Core categories. In parenthesis, we will give the abbreviations used in systems such as the online catalog and class search system. In cases where an NU Core category is satisfied by some required course in a CCIS degree program, we will state that fact.

For convenience, we will divide the information into two sections:

• NU Core Categories of Interest to New Students
• Advanced NU Core Categories

NU Core Categories of Interest to New Students

• Writing: First Year Writing (NU Core 1st year Writing)
  • Satisfied by: ENGL 1111 College Writing
  • Satisfied by: ENGL 1102 College Writing—SOL (Speakers of Other Languages)
  • Satisfied by: AP Credit in English
• Social Science Level 1 (NU Core Social Science Lvl 1)
  • Satisfied by: CCIS degree programs that require any of the following courses:
    • ECON 1115 Macroeconomics
    • ECON 1116 Microeconomics
    • PSYC 1101 Foundations of Psychology

    The only degree programs in which this is not the case are: BS in CS, BA in CS, BS/MS in CS, and the combined majors of CS and mathematics or a science.

  • Satisfied by: AP Credit in:
    • Economics-Macro
    • Economics-Micro
    • Govt/Politics: US
    • Govt/Politics: Comparative
    • History/United States
    • History/European
    • History/World
    • Psychology
  • May be satisfied by an elective course in this category.
• Arts/Humanities Level 1 (NU Core Arts/Humanities Lvl 1)
  • Satisfied by: The BS in IS and Environmental Science and by all combined majors with the arts.
  • Satisfied by: AP Credit in
    • Art: History of Art
    • Art: Studio 2D Design
    • Music Theory
  • May be satisfied by an elective course in this category.
• Comparative Study of Cultures (NU Core Comp Stdy of Cultures)
  • Not satisfied by any specific course required in a CCIS degree program or by any AP credit.
  • May be satisfied by an elective course in this category or by some approved alternative option.
• Science/Technology Level 1 (NU Core Science/Tech Lvl 1)
  • The NU Core requirement for Science/Technology Level 1 is satisfied by: CS 2500 Fundamentals of Computer Science 1
  • However, the following degree programs have specific Science Requirements that go beyond NU Core:
    BS in CS, BS in IS, BA in CS, BS in CS/IS, BS/MS in CS
    For details, see the requirements for the individual programs.
• Mathematical/Analytical Thinking Level 1 (NU Core Math/Anly Think Lvl 1)
  • Satisfied by: CS 1800 Discrete Structures
• Mathematical/Analytical Thinking Level 2 (NU Core Math/Anly Think Lvl 2)
  • Satisfied by: CS 2800 Logic & Computation

Advanced NU Core Categories

• Writing: Advanced Writing in the Disciplines (NU Core Adv Writing in Discpln)
  Satisfied by either of the following (one is required):
  • ENGL 3302 Advanced Writing in the Technical Professions
  • ENGL 3301 Advanced Writing in the Disciplines
• Writing: Writing Intensive in the Major (NU Core Writing Intsv in Major)
  Satisfied by:
  • CS 4500 Software Development
  • IS 3500 Information System Design & Development

  Depending on the degree program in CCIS, one or the other is required.

• Capstone (NU Core Capstone)
  Satisfied by:
  • For BS in CS, BS/MS in CS, and BA in CS:
    Select one:
    • CS 4100 Artificial Intelligence
    • CS 4300 Computer Graphics
    • CS 4410 Compilers
    • CS 4550 Web Development
    • CS 4650 High Performance Computing
    • CS 4750 Secure Wireless Ad Hoc Robots on Mission (SWARM) 1
    • CS 4760 Secure Wireless Ad Hoc Robots on Mission (SWARM) 2
  • For the BS in IS and the BS in CS/IS:
    • IS 4900 Information Science Senior Project
  • For the combined majors with Business:
    • STRT 4501 Strategy in Action
  • For the combined majors with Cognitive Psychology:
    • Any Psychology course that meets the seminar requirement.
  • For CS and Mathematics:
    • CS 4300 Computer Graphics
  • For CS and Biology:
    • BIOL 4701 Biology Capstone
  • For CS and Physics:
    • Choose a capstone from the BS in CS list above or choose a capstone in Physics.
  • For the combined majors with Environmental Science
    • ENVR 4900 Earth & Environmental Science Capstone
  • For CS and Music Technology:
    • MUST 4611 Music Technology Capstone/Recital
  • For CS and Digital Art:
    • ARTD 4670 Digital Art Degree Project
  • For CS and Interactive Media:
    • IM 4700 Interactive Capstone Media 1
    • IM 4701 Interactive Capstone Media 2
  • For CS and Game Design:
    • GAME 4700 Game Design Capstone 1
    • GAME 4701 Game Design Capstone 2
  • It is also possible to satisfy the capstone requirement with an undergraduate thesis.
• Experiential Learning (NU Core Experiential Learning)
  • Normally satisfied by CCIS students through cooperative education. Speak with an advisor if you do not plan to do co-op and need an alternative.
• One Intermediate or Advanced Course Outside the Major
  • Satisfied by: SOCL 4528 Computers & Society

In the first semester, CCIS students normally take:

• CS 2500 Fundamentals of Computer Science 1
• CS 2501 Lab for CS 2500
• CS 1800 Discrete Structures
• CS 1801 Recitation for CS 2500
• CS 1200 Computer/Information Science Overview 1

In the second semester, CCIS students normally take:

• CS 2510 Fundamentals of Computer Science 2
• CS 2511 Lab for CS 2510
• CS 2800 Logic & Computation
• CS 2801 Lab for CS 2800
• CS 1210 Computer/Information Science Overview 2

Labs, recitations, and Overview meet once a week.

Let us say a bit more about the first semester courses.

CS 2500 Fundamentals of Computer Science 1 is an introduction to thinking about how to design a computer program. The course uses the text:

How to Design Programs

by Prof. Matthias Felleisen of CCIS.

The programming language is

Racket

which is an enhanced version of the classic programming language Scheme. Racket has simple syntax and elegant powers of abstraction. Programming in Racket enables a clarity of thought that carries over to work in more messy languages.

To access the Fundamentals 1 course home page, go to:

Link during Fall semester: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs2500/

Link during Spring semester: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs2500sp12/

Although CS 2500 may be taken with no prior knowledge of programming, it would certainly help if new students took a look at the first few chapters of the text and tested a few simple programs in Racket. This will put new students into the “right frame of mind”.

Even students with prior knowledge of programming will find Fundamentals of CS 1 to be an enlightening and challenging experience. Racket is a functional programming language that embraces recursive thinking. With its concise syntax and powerful intellectual constructs, Racket permits a programmer to create amazing programs with relatively few lines of code. Further, because Racket will be new to most freshmen, everyone will start on a level playing field.

CS 1800 Discrete Structures is an introduction to discrete mathematics with a focus on what is important for Computer Science. Since the ability to create correct programs depends on the ability to reason carefully about the structures and processes involved in software, this course is the foundation for future work in Computer & Information Science.

To access the course home page, go to:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/cs1800/

The text for the course was written by Prof. Harriet Fell and Prof. Jay Aslam and is available as a classpack at the bookstore.

CS 1200 Computer/Information Science Overview 1 covers a variety of topics important to new students in the college. Some topics: time management and being successful in CCIS; choosing a degree program; a bit of LINUX; and introduction to co-op.

Transfer students take CS 1220 Computer/Information Science Co-op Preparation instead of CS 1200. This Fall semester course focuses on co-op. It provides for the transfer students the same material that new freshmen learn in CS 1210 Computer/Information Science Overview 2 in the Spring semester.

The goal of the Honors distinction in Computer and Information Science is to encourage strong students to undertake a project or activity in which they may achieve excellence. Projects may range over research, software development, data analysis, or experimental prototyping. Activities may include work with significant social impact or a service learning endeavor. To apply for Honors in Computer and Information Science, the student must prepare a full report or publishable paper and a short executive summary. The student must have a minimum GPA of 3.25 but the student does not need to be a member of the university Honors program. A small faculty committee in the college will make the final decisions as to which students will receive College Honors.

For more information on the College Honors distinction in CCIS, click HERE.

Details on the application process will be posted in Spring 2013.

As we have said, CS 2500 Fundamentals of Computer Science 1 is an enlightening and challenging experience. Some students are quick learners and can move through this material faster than normal. For such students, we offer an honors section of CS 2500 in the Fall semester. The honors section will use the extra time to cover several advanced topics that would normally not be covered in the freshman year.

CCIS students who belong to the university Honors Program should take the honors section of CS 2500. In addition, the college invites any students who feel they have the intellectual energy and passion to do the extra work involved in the honors section of CS 2500 to request to be placed in that section.

You may request to be placed in the honors section of CS 2500 during summer orientation or by sending e-mail to the advising e-mail address. Please include your NU student ID in the e-mail.

In this section, we will discuss the general factors involved in choosing electives for your first semester in CCIS. This is influenced by the choice of degree program and by AP credit and transfer credit.

In the next section, we will discuss the details of how university courses are scheduled and how to find electives or additional required courses to insert into your schedule.

All new students must take the computer science courses discussed in the section Freshman CCIS Courses above. For new freshmen entering in the Fall semester, these courses will have been seeded into your schedule by the Registrar’s Office. For transfer students and for Spring freshmen, these courses will need to be entered by a CCIS advisor.

In the Fall semester, Honors students will be seeded into the honors section of CS 2500 Fundamentals of Computer Science 1. As we said above, other freshmen who wish to take this more challenging course should send a request to advising@ccs.neu.edu.

Also, in the Fall semester, new freshman will be seeded into ENGL 1111 College Writing. For students with AP credit in English, this course will need to be removed from the schedule. Also, in the combined majors for CS and Biology and CS and Physics, the course ENGL 1111 is normally deferred to the second semester.

In choosing first semester courses, there are two options that apply to any degree program and which are therefore not in the table below:

• Choose a general elective in a topic that you personally wish to study.
• Choose a course in the NU Core Comparative Study of Cultures category.

In the table, we will organize the first semester options for the specific CCIS degree programs.

To view your schedule, you must use Self Service Banner (SSB).

The most common way to reach Self Service Banner (SSB) is via the Northeastern portal called myNEU. However, Self Service Banner (SSB) may be reached directly from the web which is faster and more convenient than going through myNEU. If you choose this direct route, you will still need to provide the same login credentials as you would for myNEU. Here is the link to the Self Service Banner (SSB)login screen directly from the web:

Self Service Banner (SSB)

Once you go to this page, you may wish to bookmark the link in your browser.

To view your current schedule in SSB go to one of the following links:

• Student Schedule
• Student Week at a Glance

The latter view may be more visually appealing since the data is presented as a calendar. Note, however, that you must go to the second week to see all five weekdays.

Later you will learn that SSB may be used to Add or Drop courses. New students are not given this ability until very shortly before the start of the semester so you must work through an advisor before then.

Another important link to bookmark is the link to Enhanced Class Search that permits you to search for courses:

Enhanced Class Search

We will provide a tutorial on Enhanced Class Search below. The key point is that Enhanced Class Search provides a way to search for courses by subject or by attribute. Attributes are used to restrict the search to particular NU Core categories.

It is useful here to pause to show you the sequence patterns used at Northeastern to schedule almost all undergraduate courses. Although, at first, you will need only the Fall and Spring patterns, we will give you the link to the Summer term patterns here as well.

Fall & Spring Sequence Patterns

Summer Sequence Patterns

If you look at the Fall & Spring Sequence Patterns, you will see that the week is divided into color-coded blocks of time that are designated with a sequence number or letter. The most used sequence patterns for lecture courses are the following 15 patterns:

• Sequence 1 is Mon Wed Thu  8:00 to  9:05
• Sequence 2 is Mon Wed Thu  9:15 to 10:20
• Sequence 3 is Mon Wed Thu 10:30 to 11:35
• Sequence 4 is Mon Wed Thu  1:35 to  2:40
• Sequence 5 is Mon Wed Thu  4:35 to  5:40
• Sequence 6 is Tue Thu Fri 11:45 to 12:50 [only used for a few courses]
• Sequence 7 is Tue Wed Fri  3:25 to  4:30 [only used for a few courses]

• Sequence A is Mon Thu 11:45 to  1:25
• Sequence B is Mon Wed  2:50 to  4:30
• Sequence C is Tue Fri  8:00 to  9:40
• Sequence D is Tue Fri  9:50 to 11:30
• Sequence E is Wed Fri 11:45 to  1:25
• Sequence F is Tue Fri  1:35 to  3:15
• Sequence G is Tue Fri  3:25 to  5:05
• Sequence H is Tue 11:45 to  1:25
  Thu  2:50 to  4:30

Laboratories and recitations may meet one day per week in one of the above time blocks or may use the other sequence patterns shown in the PDF document. Some studio courses such as those offered by Art+Design also use the alternate sequence patterns.

Unfortunately, in the Banner system, the sequence numbers and letters are not available. All you will see in Self Service Banner (SSB) are the day/time slots with the five week days abbreviated as:

Mon = M  Tue = T  Wed = W  Thu = R  Fri = F

Nevertheless, if you keep in mind that the sequences are used to create the class schedules, it will make things much more comprehensible.

The Banner system has a sophisticated web page that permits you to search for classes by selecting particular departments or by selecting particular attributes such as NU Core categories. Further constraints may be given on the course numbers or titles. A tutorial on how to use the class search system may be found at:

A Guide to Banner Enhanced Class Search

New students are not given access to the course Add/Drop system prior to orientation. Initial registration must be done by an advisor. New students will gain access to Add/Drop shortly before the beginning of the semester so we give the link to a tutorial on its usage.

A Guide to Banner Course Add/Drop

If you search for classes either before or after orientation and wish advisor help in registration, send e-mail to:

advising@ccs.neu.edu

Please include:

• Your full name in the subject line
• Your NU student ID
• For each class that you wish to be registered for:
  • The course number
  • The course title
  • The 5-digit Course Reference Number (CRN) that designates a particular class section of a course.
• If some classes must be dropped from your schedule to make space, please specify those classes.

Since many students ask about whether they need to bring a computer and, if so, what kind, we will give a brief description of the CCIS computing facilities and then give an answer to the question of student computers.

Labs

CCIS has 3 lab facilities in its building West Village H.

• 102 WVH
  • This is an open lab in the sense that students may walk in and use the systems during the day and into the evening hours.
  • This lab has 80 systems with a mixture of Linux and Windows.
  • This lab also has tables and power strips for student laptops.
• 210 WVH
  • This lab is used for scheduled lab sections for various courses.
  • This lab has 48 Windows systems.
• 212 WVH
  • This lab is used for scheduled lab sections for various courses.
  • This lab has 40 Windows systems.

One may log into a Linux system from a Windows system so access to Linux is possible from all 168 systems in the CCIS labs.

There are currently no CCIS labs with Macintosh systems but nevertheless many faculty and students choose Macs as their personal machine.

There are also many other labs on campus. The most important of these is the Info Commons in the Snell Library that is managed by Central IT. This lab contains both Windows systems and Macs.

Software

The CCIS Systems Group maintains a specific suite of software for use by students in the college. Programming languages and integrated development environments (IDEs) can usually be downloaded by students for their personal systems for free.

The primary online storage for student data is on the Linux servers but there is a transparent way that data created on the Windows systems in the labs may be saved to the Linux storage area.

Central IT supplies a large suite of general purpose software on its NUnet network. This software may be accessed both on the machines managed by Central IT and on the CCIS lab systems. This software cannot be downloaded by students for free. Therefore, if you use this software, you will want to take advantage of the CCIS options for online data storage.

Student computers

Given the description of CCIS facilities and those of Central IT, it is entirely possible for students to come without a computer. That being said, virtually every student wants their own machine.

In CCIS, we recommend laptops over desktops since inevitably you will want to take the system with you when you travel and when you participate in co-op. In CCIS, you can work with a Windows system, a Mac, or a Linux system. Therefore, you may choose the operating system you like best.

Many faculty and students choose to work with a machine that is configured to run more than one operating system. In this case, you need to partition both the internal memory and the available hard drive space.

Here are some recommended system parameters:

• Minimum of 4 GB of internal memory.
  If you plan to run 2 operating systems in parallel then 8 GB of internal memory will probably be more satisfactory.
• Get as much hard disk space as you can afford.
• Having the fastest current processor is not needed.
  Usually it is much less expensive to choose a processor that is one or two steps below the fastest available.
• Note: You might want to check out the NU portal as you may be able to obtain a discount.

Although academics are a central reason to attend college, it is equally important to meet people, develop social skills, belong to groups that interest you, get adequate exercise, and simply have fun.

Let us first describe the student organizations within the College of Computer & Information Science.

The Northeastern University Student Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery is a student group that is the hub of student-directed activities in the college. During Fall and Spring semester, NUacm sponsors a weekly lecture series that features interesting speakers from industry or from the open-source community. There is an occasional student or faculty talk as a change of pace. NUacm organizes GeekWeek which is a week of fun activities held in the evening. NUacm sponsors some food events such as a barbeque once each semester. Finally, NUacm maintains a large library of donated books that students may borrow as needed.

CISters is a group created with the intention of supporting and informing women who are interested in computer and information sciences. CISters sponsors evening meetings with invited women speakers in techical fields and these meetings often include dinner with the speaker so the students may have extensive conversations. Leaders in CISters are also often leaders in NUacm.

The CCIS Crew is the Volunteer Systems Group at CCIS. It is a group of self-motivated students (not a student group) that investigates new and potentially cool technologies, organizes and performs research & development for the CCIS Systems Group, and strives to improve and produce services that benefit the CCIS community.

There are 2 relatively new CCIS student groups that do not yet have web sites.

The NU Hacks group organizes hackathon events in which students work together to rapidly build projects. These events may take place on evenings and/or weekends. This group has a Twitter address @NUHacks

The Game Design Club is in its nascent stage.

In addition to the CCIS student groups, there is a vast array of student organizations at Northeastern. For the starting point to lots of information, go to NU Student Activities .

The college is located in the heart of the Fenway area of Boston.

The Museum of Fine Arts is directly across the street from the home of CCIS: West Village H. Furthermore, within a short walk you may find:

• The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
• Symphony Hall: Boston Symphony and Boston Pops
• Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music

As can see from the large map, West Village H is one block from the Back Bay Fens and the Kelleher Rose Garden. This is part of theEmerald Necklace designed in the late 1800’s by Frederick Law Olmsted. In this extended park, you may do walking, running, or biking for miles. If you go outbound far enough, you will reach the Arnold Arboretum which holds a wonderful collection of trees and plants. To visit the Arboretum directly, you may take the Orange Line from the Ruggles station at Northeastern to its terminus at Forest Hills.

If you make your way on Massachusetts Ave to the Charles River, you find another extended system of paths suitable for walking, running, or biking. These go inbound to the Charles River Dam and outbound as far as Waltham.

Finally, West Village H is a 15 minute walk from Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. The light towers of Fenway Park may be seen from the upper floors of West Village H.