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Admission to the Program is accomplished in accord with the requirements for admission to the Graduate School at Texas Southern University. The entire admission process will be under the direction of the Graduate Committee in the Department of Computer Science and the Graduate Council in the Graduate School at the University.
For unconditional admission, the University requirements, as well as the Program requirements, are as follows:
Conditional admission may be given to applicants who do not satisfy all of the requirements for unconditional admission in accord with existing University procedures. However, final disposition of these cases ultimately rests with the Dean of the Graduate School.
In addition to the general requirements for admission referenced above, applicants for admission to graduate standing in Computer Science are expected to present evidence of having completed the following courses with the minimum number of semester credit hours indicated with grades of “C” or better:
After successfully completing the course requirements to be described below, students admitted to the Program must pass a department-administered Qualifying Examination upon completion of those courses designated as “core courses” for the M.S. in Computer Science. This examination must be passed after no more than two attempts and prior to embarking upon a thesis, if the curriculum plan described below that requires a thesis (Plan A) is followed.
A student cannot be accepted to “candidacy status” for the M.S. in Computer Science until the Qualifying Examination is successfully completed.
An overall summary of the general requirements for the M.S. in Computer Science follows:
In designing the overall curriculum of study for the M.S. in Computer Science, the guidelines for computer science curriculum content from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) were consulted. The ACM is a highly respected professional organization that has guided the development of computer science educational programs for many years. Essentially, the ACM recognizes a set of fourteen (14) content areas that represent the body of knowledge for computer science. These areas are as follows:
| 1. Discrete Structures (DS) | 2. Programming Fundamentals (PF) | 3. Algorithms and Complexity (AL) |
| 4. Architecture and Organization (AR) | 5. Operating Systems (OS) | 6. Net-Centric Computing (NC) |
| 7. Programming Languages (PL) | 8. Human-Computer Interaction (HC) | 9. Graphics and Visual Computing (GV) |
| 10. Intelligent Systems (IS) | 11. Information Management (IM) | 12. Social and Professional Issues (SP) |
| 13. Software Engineering (SE) | 14. Computational Science (CN) |
The M.S. in Computer Science, as proposed, requires the completion of thirty (31) semester credit hours to be completed over a two-year period. Students enrolled will have the option of either doing a thesis (Plan A) or not doing one (Plan B). For the Plan A curriculum, six (6) semester credit hours are devoted to original research, while Plan B curriculum requires the completion of six (6) extra elective credits and an independent Master’s project.
For Plans A and B, 13 semester credit hours through five courses constitute a core curriculum that must be completed before a student is allowed to establish his/her candidacy for the M.S. Degree Plan A. If the student elects to follow Plan A, he/she is appointed a Thesis Advisor by the Chairperson of the Department of Computer Science in accord with the regulations of the Graduate School.
The five core courses address the first seven content areas of the fourteen total areas referenced by the ACM. The remaining content areas are addressed in elective offerings in accord with the backgrounds and research interests of the faculty members to anchor the overall graduate program.
Thus, the Plan A curriculum requires completion of 5 core courses for 13 semester credit hours, 4 elective courses for 12 semester credit hours, and 6 semester credit hours of thesis research for a total of 31 semester credit hours.
The Plan B curriculum requires completion of four core courses for 13 semester credit hours, and 5 elective courses for 15 semester credit hours, and one course of independent master’s project for 3 semester credit hours for a total of thirty (31) semester credit hours. These overall plans are designed for students to complete at Texas Southern University once admitted. Transfer students will not be recruited. However, in the event that a student wants to transfer credits from an accredited institution of higher learning to the University for use in fulfilling requirements for the M.S. in Computer Science, the Dean of the Graduate School must be contacted directly for review of the request. If the request for transfer credits is approved by the Dean, official notification is provided to the Office of the University Registrar to include these credits on the student’s official transcript. The following two restrictions apply to these transfer credits: no more than six (6) semester credit hours may be transferred at the graduate level, and credits accepted for transfer must have been earned with grades of “B” (3.00) or better.
The five core courses are listed below. Reference is made to the ACM content area(s) addressed at the end of each course title:
The following courses are intended as electives for the degree program with ACM content areas noted:
| First Year | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Semester | Second Semester | |||||
| Course | Course Name | Hours | Course | Course Name | Hours | |
| CS511 | Algorithmic Analysis and Data Structures | 3 | CS541 | Operating Systems | 3 | |
| CS531 | Computer Architectures | 3 | CS551 | Theory of Computation | 3 | |
| CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | |
| Total | 9 | Total | 9 | |||
| Second Year Plan-A(Thesis) | ||||||
| First Semester | Second Semester | |||||
| Course | Course Name | Hours | Course | Course Name | Hours | |
| CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | |
| CS | Thesis Research | 3 | CS | Thesis Research | 3 | |
| Total | 6 | Total | 6 | |||
| Second Year Plan-B(Non-Thesis) | ||||||
| First Semester | Second Semester | |||||
| Course | Course Name | Hours | Course | Course Name | Hours | |
| CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | |
| CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | CS Elective | (500 or 600 Level) | 3 | |
| Total | 6 | Total | 6 | |||