The department requires a candidate to complete an approved program of study consisting of at least 30 semester hours. At least 24 of these 30 hours must be in Computer Science courses at the 5000 level or above. (Any course that is cross-listed by Computer Science is considered to be a Computer Science course, regardless of the department in which the student actually registers.)
Up to 6 hours may be taken in courses at the 4000 level or above in other departments (CSCI 4000 level courses cannot be counted towards a Master’s degree), provided that those courses have "significant Computer Science content" and are taught by a member of the graduate faculty. The student must file a petition to allow these credit hours to be counted toward the degree. This petition must explicitly verify the above requirements and must be approved by the student's advisor and the Graduate Director of the Computer Science department.
Breadth Requirement: Computer Science Courses are listed in nine areas of research: artificial intelligence, computational biology, human-centered computing, numerical & scientific computing, programming languages, Software Engineering, Database systems, systems & networking and theory of computing. All students must earn a B or better (not a B-) in at least one 5000-level course (not 6000 or higher) in four of these nine areas.
Sub Plans
- Data Science and Engineering (DSE)
- Human Centered Computing (HCC)
- Software Systems and Cloud Computing (SCC)
- Intelligent Systems (IST)
- Robotics (RBT)
- Algorithms, Network and Optimization (ANO)
- Numerical Computation (NUM)
- General Track (GEN)
There is no limit on the number of coursework credit hours that a professional MS student can be take via the Graduate School's distance learning platform, which offers graduate-level courses in an accessible, online format.