Networking Opportunities
Students are also exposed to networking opportunities that help students grow professionally and learn valuable skills. Students in the past have also attended conferences such as the Vermont Tech Jam, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the CCSCN conference, NYCWiC, and the Google Developer Group conference. Take a look at some of the events that the Computer Science Department and ACM have organized! ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is a student-run club on campus where students can learn about a variety of topics in computer science and technology and participate in projects. The ACM is currently working on revamping their High-Performance Computing lab, where students will learn about setting up LDAP, NFS, and a firewall for a cluster of computers. Feel free to view a lot more at the ACM facebook, twitter, or instagram.
Employment Outlook
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that computer software engineers are projected to be one of the fastest growing occupations over the 2008-18 decade and that very good opportunities are expected for college graduates with at least a bachelor's degree in computer science and with practical work experience.
Computer Science is the major field with the highest entry-level salary at SUNY Potsdam. Nationwide, Computer Science bachelor's degree graduates receive salary offers exceeded only by Chemical and Electrical Engineering. Entry-level Computer Scientists receive better salaries than Mathematicians and Statisticians, and information systems specialists receive better salaries than Business Administration majors and Psychology majors.
Strong employment opportunities are expected in Computer Science-related fields, including:
- embedded systems
- ubiquitous and pervasive computing
- artificial intelligence and robotics
- information security
- data mining
- distributed processing
- client-server applications
- computer game design
A solid foundation in Computer Science will prepare you for future advances in computing technology. Our program emphasizes fundamentals as well as practical experience, which has carried our graduates from their early careers as aspiring technologists to positions of significant leadership as computer professionals. Our alumni have become captains of industry serving, for example, as vice presidents of companies such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM.