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Program Details
Computers and computer systems play a central role in business, communication, science, entertainment and medicine. As the range of computer applications continues to expand, so does the demand for computer scientists. Computer Science is an ever-changing discipline that studies the theory, design and implementation of computer applications and systems. You will learn to use computing and information technology to help solve the problems that we face in business, science and society today and those that we will face tomorrow.
The Honours Computer Science program at Carleton is organized into diverse streams so that you can develop a particular expertise.
There are six specialty streams, which allow you the opportunity to concentrate on one important area of computer science. Those specialty streams are: computer game development, algorithms, mobile computing, software engineering, computer and internet security, and network computing.
There are also three multidisciplinary streams that give you the chance to examine areas of increasing opportunity for computer scientists. Those multidisciplinary streams are: management and business systems, psychology, and biomedical computing.
All streams share a common core of computer science courses. No matter which stream you choose, you will gain expertise in all the fundamentals, including programming, algorithms, software engineering, databases and user interfaces. You may also choose to take the Honours degree without a stream, or to start without a stream and add one later.
Students can also gain work experience while earning a Computer Science degree through the co-operative education or the industrial applications internship option. Students in the internship option are both full-time Computer Science students and paid employees of the industrial partner. Carleton’s initial industrial partner is Shopify, an Ottawa-based company that has created one of the world’s leading eCommerce platforms. In addition to providing students with a salary, Shopify covers the students’ tuition and educational expenses. Students are taught all the Computer Science fundamentals of a Computer Science degree while working with professional developers at Shopify learning how the fundamentals apply to solve real problems for customers. Graduates of this program will be exceptionally well-placed for a career in Canada’s top software-development companies. For more information on this option, please visit http://scs.carleton.ca/bcs-internship.
For those students who might be interested in postgraduate studies in Computer Science, please note that an Honours degree is usually required for admission. We also offer a Combined Honours program with Mathematics. Students in other programs can opt to take a minor in Computer Science.
