About Computer Science at Earlham

Computer Science at Earlham is a growing and exciting department. Our diverse faculty and rich facilities provide an environment that fosters an interdisciplinary approach to theory and practice in the field. Computer Science works closely with Mathematics and Physics and has ties to linguistics and logic.

Our curriculum is built on the fundamental paradigms of the discipline: theory, abstraction, and design. These three are woven throughout the Department, binding the sometimes disparate topics of Computer Science into a cohesive body of knowledge and experience. Because of the rapidly changing character of the field, we review the curriculum regularly. Our work is heavily influenced by the liberal arts mission of the College, in particular our interdisciplinary approach and our inclusion of the cultural, legal, and ethical issues surrounding computing within the curriculum. We provide our graduates with the ability to make informed decisions about the appropriate use of technology in a variety of contexts.

At a practical level we rely heavily on open source software, such as Linux, Postgres, and FreeBSD, for both teaching and research. Many of our students, faculty, and alums participate in open source software development projects. Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, recently spoke on campus about the open source movement.

Applied Computer Science and Student/Faculty Research

Earlham offers many opportunities for students to apply their studies in Computer Science to real-world problems, ranging from applied computer science to more research oriented work. All of the work we do involves close interaction between students and faculty.

Students are responsible for the care and feeding of the labs, desktop machines, and networks we use in our work. This same group manages the Computer Science ftp, http, database, and dial-up services.

Athena, our 16-node Beowulf computer cluster, is managed and used by Computer Science students. This commodity hardware, hyper-cube cluster, was designed and built as part of our parallel programming class.

HIP, the Hardware Interfacing Project, works on interfacing laboratory equipment to computers. One component of this work is our local weather station, it’s installed on the roof of Dennis Hall, which also houses the Computer Science Department.

The Database Administration Group (DBA) is responsible for the design, implementation, and support of WebDB, a web-based tool for managing courses, registration, and advising. The DBA Group also performs database administration tasks for the College’s central database servers.

PA-RDBMS is a parallel, high-availability, relational database management system. This project focuses on the design and development of an open source solution for application domains requiring high throughput and/or extended service times.

These activities, and others like them, provide a variety of opportunities for students committed to reinforcing and extending their classroom learning experience.

Students who major or minor in Computer Science have gone on to advanced studies in computer science and other disciplines; software engineering positions; and system, network, and database administration. Major technology companies employing our graduates include Lucent, Amazon.com, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft, MCI/WorldCom and Ontrack.

Earlham graduates have started a number of successful technology companies, including Organic Online (web site design and hosting, publicly traded, philosophy major), Ray Ontko and Company (software development and consulting services), Summersault (web site design and hosting) and Infocom (Internet service provider).

A few of our majors have gone on to graduate work in computer science at such universities as Pittsburgh, Washington, Oregon, and Maryland.

Our curriculum’s strong mix of theory and practice, in conjunction with our applied and research activities, produces graduates prepared for a variety of careers in computer science.