CS Significant Bits E-Newsletter

• Digital Diplomas starting Spring 2023
  • Starting with this spring 2023 graduation cycle, the Office of the Registrar has partnered with a third-party vendor, Parchment, to speed up the delivery processes to now offer a Digital Diploma option along with the hard copy diploma! See how it work on their website!
• Tips and Tricks to Start the Semester

  • If you plan to enroll our various student portals, including KSIS (student account portal for enrollment & tuition payment), Canvas (course platform portal), and Webmail (student email portal) can be found on our K-State homepage (www.ksu.edu) via the sign-in link found above the search bar in the top right-hand corner of the webpage.

    Here are a few friendly tips that you may find of value:

    • Connect with your program advisor/coordinator, if you have not already done so, regarding courses to enroll in for the upcoming semesters. Please let me know if you need the program advisor/coordinator contact information.
    • Utilize our K-State Online program's search page to review your program curriculum and search for course offerings along with course details via our K-State online course search.
    • Follow this quick tutorial "how to enroll in a class in KSIS" to get enrolled in KSIS.
    • Look for required materials by searching our K-State Campus Store at https://www.bkstr.com/kansasstatestore/shop/textbooks-and-course-materials. Or check out this quick "KSIS: Find Textbook Information" tutorial to finding your required course materials within KSIS once enrolled in the class.
    • Go to our KSIS help pages for step-by-step instructions on how to enroll in a class, find textbook information, and many other need to know tasks at https://www.k-state.edu/ksis/help/students/.
    • Graduate students must email grad@ksu.edu to drop your only course, once the class has begun. Learn how to drop the course drop and refund dates at https://support.ksu.edu/TDClient/30/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=100.
    • Check your KSIS To Do Items! Sometimes these to do items in KSIS can keep you from enrolling or even prevent you from graduating.
    • In need of financial assistance? Visit the K-State Office of Student Financial Assistance website to look for aid options or visit with one of our financial aid advisors.
    • Please know that university communications will be sent to your K-State email called Webmail, which is separate from K-State Canvas announcements. We ask you to check your Webmail frequently while attending Kansas State University.
• Tea Time
  • Have fun and hang out with people in the CS department! Russ Feldhausen and David Invergo are hosting tea time on Tuesdays at 3:30pm and Fridays at 11:30am in DUE 2168 or on Zoom.

• Tutoring

  • Holtz Hall is offering tutoring remotely or face-to-face! They offer tutoring for common classes needed for our program like MATH 220, 221, 510; CIS 111, 115, 200, 300, 301, and 400; and CC 110, 210, 310, and 315. You can make appointments through the Navigate Student app.

  • Economics Tutoring Having trouble in your economics course? Drop-in Tutoring is available in the Business Building Room 3111 every Monday and Wednesday from 2:30 to 6:30 PM. Drop by for help and view the website for scheduling.

• Math Help Sessions

  • Students in math courses can get help from math GTAs in the math help sessions on Zoom. Visit the math website to view the schedule and click on any name to join their Zoom session. Also see the "Helping Students in Math Courses" and "How to Succeed in K-State Math Courses" pages.

• Navigate How-To
  • We are now using Navigate for enrollment. This can also be used to schedule appointments with your adivisors. If you have any questions on how to use Navigate or how to schedule an appointment with your advisor, please go to the Navigate How-To page.

• NASA DEVELOP National Program
  • NASA DEVELOP projects focus on helping local, national, and international communities address their environmental concerns while utilizing NASA's Earth observing fleet of satellites. Responsibilities will include: literature review, data processing and analysis, producing deliverables, and more. Applications are open until February 24th, view the website for more information and to apply.
• Koch Scholars Program
  • This is a great opportunity for students who are business, engineering or technology majors graduating between Winter 2024 Spring 2026. The Koch Scholars Program awards 80 $3,000 scholarships to students from universities across the country, plus opportunities networking and professional development. Applications are open, and close March 1st. Students can apply by going to their website.
• 2023 NSF REU
  • Selected participants will get involved in research related to big data analytics and machine learning. Participants will also gain an appreciation of the research field via software development and engineering activities and field trips. The summer 2023 REU program will run from May 30 until August 4, 2023. Application review will begin from February 15, 2023 and continue until all positions have been filled. See the website for more information.
• Declaring a Minor Concurrent or Post Baccalaureate
  • Students who complete a minor concurrent with their degree will receive recognition on their records when the degree is posted and are encouraged to seek advice early in their academic planning. Students who wish to complete a minor after a baccalaureate must reapply to Admissions as a non-degree undergraduate student to add a minor, and should consult with the minor program director prior to reapplying.
• KC FED Code-A-Thon
  • Join the Kansas City Fed on the weekend of Feb 24th for its 7th annual Code-A-Thon! During this virtual event, collegiate teams will build software solutions for meaningful problems. All submissions receive professional developer feedback and top teams will receive awards. Imagine, Code, Win! See their page for more information and to register.
• Minors and Secondary Majors in Music, Theatre, and Dance
  • For students interested in Music, Theatre or Dance, declare a minor or secondary major! Options include minors in Music, Theatre, Dance, Musical Theatre, and Jazz Studies, and a secondary major in Dace and the Human Experience. Declare online to get started!
• Summer Education Abroad Programs
  
  • The Education Abroad Programs are accepting applications! Biology in Costa Rica, BREXIT Study Tour of UK and Belgium, Interior Design and Fashion Studies in South Korea, KSU in Ireland, KSU in Japan, KSU in Prague, KSU in Italy Eng., KSU in Italy A&S, KSU in Italy Leadership, Operations and Supply Chain Management in Germany and Netherlands, Spanish and Culture in Mexico, Spanish and Culture in Spain . See these pages for more information and application deadlines.
• REU University of Central Florida
  • The purpose of the research experience for undergraduates is to encourage students to pursue graduate school and research careers. From May 19th to August 7th students will work full time on their individual research projects and be introduced to Computer Vision. Sophomores-seniors in CS with a 3.0 GPA or above can apply electronically before March 1, 2023. See the site for more information, incentive, and past REU's.

• Study Abroad Japan
  • Computer Science is participating in a 2 week travel abroad trip to Japan from May 14, 2023 to May 28, 2023. You can view more information on their website. The deadline to apply is February 15th. For more information or to meet with an Education Abroad Advisor please contact Education Abroad: 304 Fairchild Hall, overseas@ksu.edu, 785-532-5990.
• GIS Certificates
  • The Geography and Geospatial sciences department offers GIS and GIScience certificates. Earning a certificate helps document important knowledge and skills that help make student resumes stand out from the competition. Students seeking more information about certificates should visit the department's website or contact Shawn Hutchinson, shutch@ksu.edu, in the geography and geospatial sciences department.

Job and internship opportunities can be found on our Employment page.

• Samvid Scholars
  • Samvid Scholars provides both financial support and leadership development programming for future changemakers who are entering graduate school in the fall of 2023. An eligible candidate will pursue a full-time graduate program of 2 years or longer, be an incoming first-year graduate student for the 2023-2024 academic year, and more. The application is currently open and closes April 9. Finalist interviews will be notified by mid-May.
• Exploring Entrepreneurship Scholarships
  • Are you interested in learning about how innovation and the entrepreneurial mindset will help you in your career? Applications for Exploring Entrepreneurship scholarships for fall 2023 are now available. These $1,000 scholarships are awarded to students to take their first entrepreneurship class. Priority review of applications begin March 6.
• ELI Program for COE Students
  • The Engineering Leadership and Innovation program is eligible to UG students of the COE who will graduate in 2024, and have completed/will complete LEAD 212 by Spring 2023. This program offers a scholarship each semester and mentors from partnering companies. See and complete the online application for more information and to be considered.

• 3M Rise Symposium
  • Raising Influence in Science and Engineering is now accepting applications! This event is to introduce underrepresented doctoral students to careers at 3M. This virtual event will be hosted from July 17th-19th. Ideal applicants are expected to complete their graduate degree appointment within 12 months of the RISE event. The application deadline is May 1st 2023, a resume and research statement are not required. See the application for more information!
• GIS Certificates
  • The Geography and Geospatial sciences department offers GIS and GIScience certificates. Earning a certificate helps document important knowledge and skills that help make student resumes stand out from the competition. Students seeking more information about certificates should visit the department's website or contact Shawn Hutchinson, shutch@ksu.edu, in the geography and geospatial sciences department.

Job and internship opportunities can be found on our Employment page.

Graduation Preparation is important! Visit this helpful website when preparing for graduation.

If you plan on graduating this fall, check out this link to start applying. Once you apply you will be put on an email list for events coming up!

• Tech Electives Offered Fall 2023

  • CIS 532 Introduction to Deep Learning

    Foundations of deep learning, with focus on different types of modern neural network architectures (such as convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and transformers). Regularization and optimization in the context of deep learning. Frameworks and tools for building and training deep neural networks.

    CIS 533 Data Science in Practice

    The rapid growth in the ability to generate, collect, and store data has reinforced the need to analyze these data and turn them into knowledge and useful insights. The process of turning data into knowledge is called Data Science. The Data Science in Practice course provides an introduction to basic concepts of data science, implementation of data science concepts, and practical knowledge on solving and approaching problems through data science paradigms. The course includes a substantial capstone component, where open real-world data science problems will be studied and solved during the course. For that purpose we will also use common machine learning and data analysis tools such as Scikit-learn, Weka, Gensim, and many more, and develop solutions that address practical problems in data science.

    CIS 527 Enterprise Systems Administration

    Administration of the Linux operating system, including installation, configuration, distributed file systems, firewalls and security, shell scripting, and user account management.

    CIS 580 Fundamentals of Game Programming

    Fundamental principles of programming games. Foundational game algorithms and data structures. Two-dimensional graphics and game world simulation. Development for multiple platforms. Utilization of game programming libraries. Design of multiple games incorporating topics covered.

    CIS 590 Intro Food Informatics

    The increasing population of humans and (domestic) animals, changing food consumption behavior, as well as the recent developments in the awareness for food sustainability, lead to new challenges for the production and safe consumption of food. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, including Machine Learning and data analytics, might help to account for these challenges. Several research perspectives such as precision agriculture, holistic health care (one health), smart food sheds, and others already provide new opportunities through using computational methods. In this course, we will explore the state-of-the-art of the current approaches and the concept of Food Informatics, using a data-driven approach to support. We will further discuss how the perspective of Food Informatics can help address the challenges regarding the food production as well as food consumption, and its integration with related concepts.

    MIS 670 Social Media Analytics and Web Mining (requires permission)

    This course is an in-depth study of a broad range of topics and techniques in the areas of social media analytics, web mining and social network analysis. Emphasis is on fundamentals of data acquisition from the web and social media platforms, transformation of these unstructured data into structured format, advanced data processing techniques for analysis, business intelligence through web crawling, analysis of web and social media data using classification, clustering, and association techniques, sentiment analysis (or opinion mining) for business decisions, visualization of unstructured data, and social network analysis.

    ECE 542 Computer Networking

    Introduction to application, transport, network and link layer protocols, with emphasis to Internet TCP/IP protocols. Prereq- ECE 241 and a high programming language

• ENGL 516 Written Communication for the Sciences Permissions
  • If you are needing to enroll in ENGL 516 for Fall 2023, beginning Monday, 6th March, students may request permission through an online Qualtrics survey. The survey will be available at the English Department's website. Students should make their request as early as possible (on or after 3/6th), not at the time they are scheduled to enroll.
• Cyber Defense Basics CIS 351
  • 1cr. Learn the basics of cybersecurity in an interactive, hands-on fashion, no matter your level of experience. You will learn cyber-attacks and cyber-defense, wired, wireless, and internet-scale networking, local and remote vulnerabilities, and "under the hood" technologies. Because this network is physically isolated, it can be used as a "playground" for in-class practice as well as self-study.
• Games and History HIST 301B
  • Spring 2023, TU 9:30-10:45. This class is about history in games. The goal is to think more carefully about the meanings of the games we play and about what these games mean for our historical consciousness today. Students will investigate selected games in depth, and will also work toward designing their own historical games. For questions about this class contact Professor Brandom, ebrandom@ksu.edu.
• CIS 590 Data Science in Practice
  • Spring 2023 Tech Elective. The Data Science in Practice course provides an introduction to basic concepts of data science, implementation of data science concepts, and practical knowledge on solving and approaching problems through data science paradigms. The course includes a substantial capstone component, where open real-world data science problems will be studied and solved during the course.
• New Math Scholars Program Fall 2022
  • The K-State Mathematics Department will offer a new Fall-Spring course sequence Math 350 - 351 next year that satisfies the requirements of Calculus 3 (Math 222), Matrix Algebra (Math 551) and Ordinary Differential Equations (Math 340). Math 350 - 351 takes a unified approach to these subjects and is aimed at students who want to learn this material at a more advanced level. The sequence counts as a total of 10 credits versus the 11 credits for the three separate classes.