Ep. 109 - Exploring the Majors within the School of Computer Science & Engineering

In Ep. 109, Olga Valdivia speaks with returning guest, Dr. Fadi Muheidat from CSUSB's School of Computer Science & Engineering. Dr. Muheidat breaks down the various majors you can choose from: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computer Systems, and Bioinformatics. Dr. Muheidat clears up common myths about computer science, talks about the programming languages you’ll need to know, and highlights the many resources available to support you such as scholarships, tutoring, and mentoring. Whether you're just curious or ready to declare, this episode is packed with insight and advice for finding your path in tech at CSUSB!

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Transcript

Olga Valdivia  
Welcome to the CSU advising podcast. I'm your host. Olga Valdivia, academic advisor with the ASUA and we are joined today with Dr. Fadi Muheidat  from the College of Computer Science and Engineering. So thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Fadi.

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
Thank you, Olga, for having me. I'm really excited to be with you today. 

Olga Valdivia  
Well, we appreciate it. We've previously been on a different episode talking about chat GPT edu, and that was really fascinating to learn what we can do with these tools, right? So thank you for joining us again. Today, we're going to be focusing on the the majors offered by the School of Computer Science and Engineering. So if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about how your path led you to the current work that you do. 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
Alright. Thank you. Well, I came from Jordan, you know, country in the Middle East where I finished my kind of high school, and then I wanted to be a dentist, actually, in a computer science and engineering so in that in back home in my country, where we had to do a national exam, and I was like, one point short from getting to that to the level where I can go to the dental school. Then my second choice was computer science and engineering. So here we are. Then I joined the program there and went through all the ups and downs that you know came with the program. It's a full packet. And, yeah, I mean, after graduating with the Computer Science and Engineering. It was really a wonderful like, once you are in, you see the value, the gems of that science, of that of that major. And then I was really excited after graduation, I got my job. And, you know, kind of went through a different career pathways, until eventually, the dream, you know, the dream might have brought me to the US and, you know, to get my grad school, part of it is me and the support of my my wife, my family, and part also is my mom's kind of she wants to see that, you know, I'm a doctor, not necessarily a physician, just a doctor. I mean, she's okay not being a physician, because it's a bigger dream. But I was able kind of to, I said, Okay, I'll just do it for computer science and engineering. So I came to the US kind of to navigate that grad school and different culture and and I think that some of our students also kind of have some similar experience when it comes to trying to go outside their comfort zone. And I think that's what I decided to do, being married, having a kid, my daughter, at that time, so leaving them back home and came to the US and to my program. Later, they joined me, and they we went through the journey. It was not a straightforward it's not easy, but again, it is every time there's a new motivation, new incentive to keep going and to be successful. And here we go. I got my degree in 2017 and then came to California. Became my first kind of state where I started my professional job as a faculty. I worked two years in north of California, then joined the Cal State San Bernardino in September 2019, and I'm really very proud being here at Cal State San Bernardino. I cannot tell you how much the environment, the space, the place and the students actually changed me as a human being. So yeah, that's that's kind of my journey and where I am right now, and currently I'm doing the Director of Teaching Resource Center, in addition to my position as a faculty in computer science and engineering, which is another challenge and a kind of a great experience that I'm I'm really excited that I'm working at this position right now, working with my colleagues, my faculty, as well as maintaining my students kind of connection in the classroom.

Olga Valdivia  
Okay, thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, I bet so many students can relate to your journey, you know, and the fact that we start off with one thing and lead into something totally different. That's often a question that students ask, and it's like, well, you know, one thing opens up something new, and you follow that journey. But thank you so much for sharing. So in terms of the department or the School of Computer Science and Engineering, what different degrees do they offer?

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
Yeah, I mean, as you can see from the title, it's computer science and engineering. So we have kind of the two major majors, computer science, like the bachelor degree in computer science, it's kind of a four year program and also we have the computer engineering, those kind of the two main majors, and both of kind of them focus on the foundation of computer science and the foundation of computer engineering. So in computer science, we focus more on to the software development in computing and theoretical computer science, algorithmic problem solving, so and how computer works and how, you know what is kind of behind the scene that seems like, like people only see computer science as programming. It's not, it's not true. And I think that may be part of the misconception about computer science. That same thing about engineering, like, there is the gap is a small between both majors. However, in computer engineering, we focus more into the hardware, like, kind of the integration for both the software and the hardware, where our students have, like, more hands on experience with different kind of state of the art, you know, technologies that they need to have that kind of experience with, and at the same time they need to maintain their programming skills. So, yeah, we focus more into the hands on the we think about the computer engineering, as well as at the end of the last academic year, our students go through a full year of kind of engineering design course where they basically put everything they learned into that project. And even in the end of the spring of the academic year, they will present the work between building a software component or building an actual hardware and a lot of success stories and around around that that's kind of part of it. We also have, you know, a bachelor and bioinformatics, and that's another collaboration between computer science, biology and biochemistry, where kind of students are, you know, if you have a passion for kind of STEM or in biology or chemistry, how we can use computer science to solve such problems. So that's a wonderful interdisciplinary work between those three different departments. And our graduate really add kind of, we provide another opportunity for our students, for in their in their career, in addition to another, a kind of occult and essential knowledge. We call it the Bachelor of Arts in computer systems. So if you think about it, like people who help us manage their it, like, for example, when we say, Oh, our IT, esteem, are doing great because I can log into my email. I'm safe. There's no viruses. I keep receiving those emails about, you know, cybersecurity awareness. That's another kind of field that we focus on, is preparing our students for problem solving, web programming, system administration. And that's kind of another major measures. Call it this way, of course, since you asked about different measures. We also have different type of certificate programs and minors. We're kind of a flavor of each. So if students really, I like to be a computer scientist, but I really, sorry, a computer engineer, but I really like that computer science part, then we allow them to measure there, or if they are in the bioinformatics, then they want to do a certificate in systems programming, or even in data science. And that's why we are, we are having, like, recently, actually launched a Master of Science in data science, which is kind of applied data science. Actually, it's, you know, it's, kind of becomes the buzzword here, data science, AI. So I think it's part of our progress, of our kind of, you know, program objective that to keep, maintain, and see what's the industry need, what our students needs, and then we go with those. So we have a master in computer science, which one of the big kind of master or graduate programs here at calisthenico, in addition to the newly launched master in applied data sciences. Wonderful. So essentially, the undergrad leads students straight into the graduate program if that's something they want to continue with, right? That's correct. That's wonderful. Okay, thank you so much. Sorry, because the students also can take what we call upper division classes, and some of the other division classes are shared between graduate and undergrad. So some of ours who really think about going that route, they can also, while they are in the undergrad, they can take some of those, you know, required courses and make their grad journey even shorter.

Olga Valdivia  
A little a little faster. I love that. And I think students are always excited when they have the opportunity to take up, you know, those higher grad level courses through senior year gets them really excited about those next steps, right, 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
Correct, yes, exposure as well. 

Olga Valdivia  
Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so you kind of answered some of my other questions with the information you gave us. So I think that's wonderful. Now, what are any misconceptions students might have about the CSE major? 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
I mean, yeah, that's I said, that's really question, because, again, everybody says, oh, it's all about programming, you know, and I can learn programming in high school, then why I need to go into those four kind of years of computer science classes and go through that hassle, which eventually I will be only doing programming. That's a huge, huge misconception computer science, or whatever system, this system that we are using for this podcast, is not designed just because, you know, programming. No, it is designed because somebody went to through the whole curriculum of computer science who understand what is the foundation of computers? What is the foundation for programming? What is the database? What is web development? What all of this? What are the security measures? What are networking? If you all know what I'm talking about, here is our courses you have to go through. So the knowledge that we're able to say, I need to write this piece of code, if they don't take the course, they don't know. What are security audits that they need to go through? What is the process? What is the encapsulation? What kind of different programming paradigms or different frameworks that they need to use. Also part of our curriculum in any major that we have in computer science is Computer Ethics. What is the ethical way of doing computing? Right? And again, it's a very, very important for our graduates. We are preparing them to be, again, self directed learners they also need to be connected to their net, to their community, as well as serving their community. Our graduates will be, maybe going to be summoned to the court, so they need to understand all those the basics in and out of computer science, what it takes. Not only are we, are they smart and good programmers, which is great, by the way, don't get me wrong. But they know the foundation. So when they speak, they speak with knowledge, not just about something a YouTube, kind of a good YouTube channel that I learned programming from, right, right? Well, tell me a little bit about some of the programs I may not being a computer techies, you know, person, a lot of the students, sometimes, when they meet with us, they ask about programming. I've heard a few different names. Can you tell us some of the big programs that are used? As I said? I mean, if we speak like, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, we can talk about, oh, people are writing, for example, programs in in C or C plus plus languages, or they're even using what we call the hardware descriptive language, like the HDL or system Verilog, or even assembly language. People who play games, they understand when I say assembly language, because, you know, we can go and fine tune those games today to the assembly level assembly when we talk about hardware level language, kind of, you know, go to the lower level. Nowadays we have, like, a plenty of those programming languages. We have, again, C, C Plus Plus, they are still Python. I'm pretty sure you hear the Python a lot in statistical analysis. SPSS doesn't necessarily programming languages could be packages or software packages, but there are, like, a lot, like, if you are in web development, we have, like, JavaScript, iOS development, react, so there are a lot, a lot of tools and programming languages are there just to make our life easier. So the thing about this, I mean, we always tell our students, don't get confused. Like in our program, we don't teach all those programming languages. We teach them kind of the core, the foundational programming languages, like C plus plus a Python and system Verilog like for hardware programming language. The reason these are Foundation, if you know one of them, it will be easy for you to learn others, right? So what's going to be different? For example, if you are a Python programmer, you will see there's a lot of tools or libraries that are available for you, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel, right? Compared to the other kind of programming languages. So having too many programming languages, again, it makes your life easier, but it shouldn't be a problem to learn as far as you go through the curriculum, because the curriculum prepare our students to think critically and be able to us, you know, to develop that learning learning curve in a very short time, given that they have the foundation. 

Olga Valdivia  
You mentioned game design, and that's a question we get a lot. How would you say the majors, just like the General Major is compared to the specific game design major? 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
Yeah. I mean, when we start talking about, like, you know, the kind of the minors, you know, because we have the computer systems, and within that, we can have web development or game design. So if you look at the curriculum, you will find they have the like, maybe around 20 units or even more on the foundation, like, regardless of the game design or system programming or whatever you know, sub, major or minor, you will have to go through that foundation. What's going to be different is the specific courses. Even some of our game design courses, we allow ourselves to take courses from Arts, because you have to bring that knowledge. We cannot teach it ourselves from computer science. So we rely in other departments on campus to kind of educate our students and to build that, you know, holistic experience for graduates. 

Olga Valdivia  
Oh, that's awesome. I always love to hear when departments are doing work across campus, you know, and letting students shine in their area. So what different resources can you share that the college has available to students? Do I know in the past, I've heard of different centers, maybe scholarships, that sort of thing. What can you tell us about computer science and engineering? 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
I mean, we are a school in the College of College of Natural Sciences. So definitely, there is a lot of kind of services and resources at the school level as well as at the college level. For example, at the college level, we have the science Success Center, right? You know that kind of provides advising, workshops, career panels, enhance student development, and it's another place, a wonderful place, actually, for our students, you know, to be there and interact and meet and talk. So it's such a wonderful that at the college level, at the University Award like CSE Computer Science and Engineering, we have, for example, the CSE club. Our students also, again, you know, it's an organization, of course, and they are affiliated with I triple E, another, like, a major, prestigious engineering kind of Institute, and also provide like workshops, like I've seen, like, great, great. I actually joined their Discord server because I want to learn more about what they are doing. And hopefully we can provide advice if needed. And the idea, like, I'm really surprised, not surprised. Like, happy and excited, like to see our students their leadership roles, they care about, you know, their peers. So you can see seniors, especially when they're they are, the last academic year, busy with those, you know, 5000 level courses, 4000 level courses, projects, capstone as well as looking for jobs, internship, you can you can imagine all that pressure on them, yet providing tutoring, networking, celebrations, game days and, you know, support their peers. That's kind of that tells you a lot about the culture that we have in our program. So the CSE club and the women in crypto, science and engineering guys, engineering as well. They are like two. They are always peer together and partner support, like events for our students. So I would say there's another service we provide, and I didn't like to that, tutoring services through a sua. We have in a collaboration that I'm very grateful for. That collaboration with ASUA as well as something like sponsored through the department, through different grants in our campus, also in our department, also, we have like other like scholarship programs, like the grant that provide, you know, financial support for our students, you know, in pursuing Computer Science and Engineering, another kind of source, I would say, an important source, which we, I didn't talk about, is faculty. You have the faculty available, their labs, their time, their research, so they share their experience. This is an important resource, so that's needed, and I think we'll be happy to have our students approach us. Maybe we need to be very, very proactive in reaching out to them, but we also want them to break the that the ice and remove that go outside their comfort zone. We are human being, right?

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
We have a great kind of things that we can share with you or put you in an experience that we appreciated having it with our, you know, our faculty when we are students. So I think this is a very, very important resource. Generally, students, they don't realize the value until they maybe not. All of them, of course, when they feel like, Oh, I'm graduating, I need recommendation letter in supporting me here. How can I get a job? Or can you review my resume. So at the end, why don't you start way, way early. So that's my advice for you know, you know prospective students or even current students. Please make your faculty your best friend. Come see them, introduce yourself. Ask for an opportunity. Maybe you don't have the fund to sponsor your work, but we will have the lab the time to work with you in improving your research experience. Also, you might have some resources to get you connected and provide your recommendation other kind of offerings in our campus, I want to highlight the last thing here about the resources. I know our school director, Dr. Dajani, is very active on providing opportunities for our students, between internship connection with the industry, with the Air Force, with kind of different possible like, you know, you know players who can help our students and be career ready. So definitely, very grateful to have him and sharing the support to our students and support their graduation plans. 

Olga Valdivia  
For sure, absolutely. Thank you so much for that. I think it's always so refreshing to hear faculty say, we want the students to come to us, right? So thank you for that. Now, one question that I usually have is pertaining to the math sequence in the majors. Many times students come in and they're already behind one class, right? So we like to tell them to follow their roadmap as much as possible and follow those math sequence so they can move through the major. Now, I do have a different question altogether. So if I was a student thinking about computer science and engineering, but maybe on the fence. What do you feel is a good backup major, or something related? 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
You mean students who are interested in computer science engineering, or they are in computer science engineering and thinking about something else. 

Olga Valdivia  
Either or if they're on the fence, how would you convince them to stay in this major? 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
Well, I will, I will be biased to my department, well, in computer science and engineering. Again, I know we might have kind of a stereotype of being like difficult or take you forever to graduate. You know, sometimes we hear those keywords? I think there are multiple reasons to that, and you mentioned any great, great point. Olga, thank you for bringing the math sequence. Because what we see in our advising again, our students, they come to us like maybe in their third year, second, third year, where we start doing the academic advising. As a computer science faculty, we see that between not paying attention to the roadmap, so we show them like the dependency. They say, see it on the map. They don't understand the dependency. So that that dependency is important and that we highlight this course is offered once a year. That means, if you are planning to graduate spring, 2026 then the engineering design course, which I was talking about, the year long engineering design course, you have to take it in the fall 2025 so you can graduate next spring. If you don't do that, you will be one year behind, right? So there are certain courses that their dependency. They tend to ignore other thing. When they say, oh, computer science class are difficult. Let me focus more into my GEs. Let me take it easy on this class and that. And as you said, they might miss that kind of the milestone. Oh, you should have taken calculus too, because that will open this course. That course will open another two courses for you. So that could be maybe they are not feeling ready to go to the kid engineering courses at that time which we do to blame them. That's part. I hope this video will be a good way for our students to learn that it's not about difficulty. Every class comes with its own challenges, right? Think about it, when you end up taking a five courses, upper division, CSE, that would be too much. However, if you, if you do the balance, then you might take one GE course, one, you know, course, three creative science engineering courses, so you can find kind of diverse courses and different kind of workload. So that's, that's, I think, very important. So for our students, come to us, I would say, if you are in defense, assist your kind of your interest, like, you know, where's your passion? Do you think you might be into the technology? Can you think about, will you be able to develop a problem solving? Because the reason I'm talking about problem solving, or critical thinking, or for me, curiosity is the first one. Always, if you have the curiosity go Computer Science and Engineering, you'll be you will do great regardless of any other passion, if you have a great problem solving. The reason I'm mentioning this because with this AI generative AI that we talked about last time, what's going to distinguish you is not just about how strong a programmer you are. No you have to be how critical thinker you are, right? So I would say, think about yourself. If you find yourself great problem solvers, you know, you kind of develop a certain framework between your innovation and I think you have what it takes to be in computer science and engineering, because what's left is just being in the class, take go through the process, build those skills together and use that problem solving while learning a new tools like programming. So I think that will be a good thing. Another way you can take our two degree courses, right? You know, CSE, for example, 2010, CSE, 1300 CSE 1100 take those courses and find yourself. Do you think you belong? If that's the case, then that's another sign that computer science engineering is mine. And as always, I said this before, and I will always say it, don't wait until somebody tell you, go see your faculty. We are available from day one on campus, not from second year or third year in your major, ask for mentorship. And I know now the university, through center Office of Science research career center, they are doing great job educating our students and kind of removing those barriers, bridging that gap, and moving our students, you know, to see their faculty, and also inviting us to be part of their activities, you know, like a sua, for example, being a first year experience, welcoming the students. So seeing us asking those questions will help them realize that, oh, it's not difficult. I can't do it. It's manageable, right? And you mentioned something about the resources. We have a ton of resources on campus, and our research can utilize that. So that's kind of my advice to students who are there, find your passion and think if that career or that think about your career right where you want to be, but don't just make the career is also the goal. Think about what's going to take you through that, because if you are not happy with your major, regardless of the career, you will not be successful there, right? So that's very important, that you find your passion before you you know, continue in that major. 

Olga Valdivia  
Thank you so much for that answer. I just think that's beautiful to hear, find your passion, right? And go from there. Thank you so much. I just want to echo what you said, meet your faculty early. There's no reason to have to wait until your junior year, because you're right. It's all a balance, and we try to do our best at telling students to mix their GEs with their major, because we see students that finish all their Ges, then they're in that place where it's like, okay, I have five upper division major courses, and the course load may be very heavy. So, you know, always finding that balance, I think it's just gonna make a happier student, less stress and better planning, right, right? Well, thank you so much. Do you have any final thoughts? Anything else you would like to share with our students? 

Dr. Fadi Muheidat  
I would like share this message for like prospective students, I think Cal State, San Bernardino is a wonderful place to be at. I mean, if you are like in doubt, should I choose CSUSB? I will assure you, choose it and you will not regret that decision. It's such a wonderful space. Care about students first, and that's something that we do in even as I gotta put my faculty perspective. I was excited to be at Cal State, San Bernardino. I'm really happy where I am, and I cannot be thankful for everybody around me, who support me, who you know, like can hand their support, and they provide me with a with a smile, with the welcome. And I think that's that tells a lot about who we are at Cal State, San Bernardino, so we almost share with our students, like, how vulnerable we are, right? I came from a, I'm not saying like a middle class, no, even, even, even, way lower than with the class family. I work with my family, my father, my grandfather, in the farm after school and without a scholarship that my father was eligible to, I would not be in college right, at least now here we are. I had my own hiccups and downs in my college. I almost failed a course or two. And, you know, I always mentioned this to my students, the two courses that I almost failed when I was undergrad, actually the two courses that I'm teaching at calisthenics. So I tell them, Look, guys, this is look, if anybody could have been going through these hiccups and give up, it's me. But look where I am right now. I think that's very important, you know, and our students are like, I need a shining diamond. We need, kind of to scratch that diamond and to see the value of them, and look at the Career Center, like to the research, like competition, right, meeting of the minds and other kind of great opportunities that we have here. Our students are going to the CSU level. They are competing with their peers at CSU level. They're competing at the national conferences. So that's who we are, you know. So never ever underestimate who you are, and never doubt what we can offer you at Cal State San Bernardino.

Olga Valdivia  
Thank you so much. Dr. Muheidat. W appreciate your time, and we're just so happy to have amazing faculty that I care so much about our students. So thank you again for joining us, and thank you so much for having me absolutely so maybe we see you in the near future.