News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Tennessee Tech will begin offering a new Computer Science Ph.D. program this fall.
Department of Computer Science Chairman Dr. Jerry Gannod said the new program will replace the current Ph.D. engineering program that focused on computer science. Gannod said the new program will better represent the computer science curriculum.
“We are under that omnibus but you know it is a different degree,” Gannod said. “It’s not engineering per se but this elevates the visibility of the program and that we are doing something different than the other engineering disciplines.”
Gannod said the computer science department focuses on cyber security and that the new program will allow students to further their education and conduct research in the cyber security field. Gannod said the new program will help the university raise the level of its Computer Science Department to contend with programs from other universities.
“It will help us do things like recruit new faculty,” Gannod said. “Help us recruit new students because then we are following a standard that is being used at our peer institutions and institutions that we aspire to be like.”
Gannod said computer science has grown immensely as an industry over the past several years. Gannod said the university has seen similar growth.
“We have doubled in the amount of students over the past eight years,” Gannod said. “I think when I first started back in 2016 we had roughly 360 undergraduates. This past year we surpassed that we had 730 or 740 undergraduates and believe it or not our Ph.D. program has grown at an even faster clip than that.”
Gannod said the the new program will meet an ongoing demand in the computer science industry. Gannod said the new Computer Science Ph.D. program will roll into effect this upcoming August.
