U of S Awarded First National Accreditation for Software Engineering Program in Canada

Posted September 28, 2001


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 27, 2001 2001-09-18-OTHER

U of S Awarded First National Accreditation for
Software Engineering Program in Canada

The Software Engineering Honours B.Sc. program offered by the Department of
Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan has now been formally
accredited by the Canadian Computer Science Accreditation Council (CSAC).
This is the first Software Engineering program in Canada to be accredited by
CSAC.

Software Engineering is an applied area of Computer Science that deals with
building safe, reliable, and large software systems. University programs in
Software Engineering seek to provide students with solid grounding in both
the theoretical foundations and the practical skills needed to build
high-quality software systems.

The Computer Science Accreditation Council is sponsored by the Canadian
Information Processing Society (CIPS), and is composed of experienced
academics and software professionals who create standards for academic
programs in Computer Science and assesses that programs in Canadian
universities meet these standards.

Graduates of CSAC-accredited Software Engineering programs can seek
certification as an Information Systems Professional (I.S.P.), recognized as
an important professional credential in the information systems area in
Canada. Dr. Jim Greer, Head of Computer Science at the U of S says he is
pleased that "graduates of our Software Engineering Honours program can
compete with the best as they take up jobs in the software industry here in
Saskatchewan or anywhere else in the world."

Students wishing to register in the Software Engineering program in Computer
Science at the University of Saskatchewan must apply for admission to the
College of Arts and Science. Greer states "while it may seem somewhat odd
that a program containing the "Engineering" name is not located in the
College of Engineering, in fact many specialties such as genetic
engineering, protein engineering, social engineering, etc. reside in other
Colleges."

In some Canadian universities Software Engineering is taught in engineering
schools and accredited by engineering bodies. Recently a joint computer
science and engineering task force was formed to consider a process for
cooperation in the accreditation of undergraduate-level software engineering
programs. On this issue, Dr. Greer concluded that there "are no ambiguities
in Saskatchewan. The only Software Engineering program is in Computer
Science; it is accredited by the Computer Science Accreditation Council; and
it leads to an I.S.P. (not a P.Eng.)." He looked forward to "attracting to
Computer Science the very best and brightest of Saskatchewan's young people
who wish to learn how to build software that works safely, reliably and
effectively".

-30-

For more information please contact:

Jim Greer
Department of Computer Science
University of Saskatchewan
Phone: (306) 966-8655
E-mail: jim.greer@sask.usask.ca


Mylene Sayo
Public Relations
CIPS
Phone: (416) 861-2477
E-mail: mylene@cips.ca
Web site: http://www.cips.ca/standards