Its purpose is the same, but as of this month, the UND Department of Computer Science has a new place on campus.
The department's academic mission was moved July 1 to the UND College of Engineering and Mines from its former home in the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences. Though the official administrative structure has shifted, students and faculty will continue to work as usual in Streibel Hall in the university's Aerospace Complex.
Engineering College Dean Hesham El-Rewini, whose background is in computer science, said the move has been "going great" and that faculty were excited about the change ahead of its implementation.
"From the minute that we knew this was going to happen, we started a transition plan to work on all aspects of the move," El-Rewini said, adding that the the move should bring the UND computer science department into a more traditional position across the landscape of higher education.
More than 80 percent of university computer science departments are contained within a college of engineering, he said.
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"Students will know where to find it and, for all the faculty that will apply, they know they'll be in a similar place to the schools they graduated from and also what people know as normal," El-Rewini said. He believes students and faculty will see more opportunities as a result of the move, which also places the department back on somewhat familiar ground.
The UND computer science program has been with aerospace almost since the department's introduction to campus. But before that, said aerospace Dean Paul Lindseth, the department was housed for a time in the engineering college after being founded as part of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Lindseth said computer science was brought to aerospace in the early 1980s, at about the same time aerospace became a separate college on the UND campus. Since then, the college and department have worked together to address software challenges in aviation. That collaboration has been so valuable that Lindseth said he would have preferred if the department had stayed where it was. He said UND leadership had ultimately determined the move to engineering would be best for the university at large.
His college will "hate to see (computer science) go," but Lindseth is optimistic the intercurricular collaboration will continue, if not deepen. Over in engineering, El-Rewini predicts the shift will boost the department's ability to recruit students and provide them with more career opportunities down the road. He also described the department as "going back home."
"We were here, we moved to aerospace and now we're coming back," El-Rewini said.
