Here’s my usual report on our spring 2025 enrollments, as of week 2 of the semester.

Number	Title	Enrolled/Cap	under Math	She:He
CS 167-A,B	Intro. Computational Problem Solving	51/60		1:2
CS 210-A,B	Computer Systems Fundamentals	40/40		3:5
CS/Math 215	Introduction to Data Science	26/25	1	1:1
CS 255	Computer Simulation Methods	21/24		1:2
CS 267	Human-Computer Interaction	16/16		1:1
CS 270-A,B	Data Structures	21/32		1:3
CS 303	ST: Computational Exercises	12/30		1:3
CS/Math 327	Algorithm Design & Analysis	21/24	1	1:4
CS/Math 350	Foundations of Machine Learning	23/20	20	1:3
CS 370	Software Design	24/20		1:2
CS 496	Capstone Project II	22/16		1:3

Commentary

No big surprises here. While our rosters are typically a quarter to a third women, we see that Data Science and Human-Computer Interaction both have a balanced gender ratio. Unfortunately, CS 167 is not as balanced as it sometimes is.

CS 303, ST: Computational Exercises, is being offered by John Stratton as an overload for the second time. This 1-credit course gives students additional practice with solving algorithm design puzzles similar to those found on coding competition websites like LeetCode or Codewars, or in some technical interviews. We look forward to regularizing this opportunity.

CS/Math 350, Foundations of Machine Learning, is the class formerly known as Mathematical Modeling and continues to be taught by Doug Hundley (Mathematics). It is mostly populated by Math majors.

What’s not visible in the table above is that this is another semester of unbalanced enrollments:

• 30 students in CS 167 at 9 am vs 21 at 8 am.
• 16 students in CS 270 at 9 am vs 5 at 8 am. (The smaller section is majority women, while the larger has only one woman.)
• 28 students in CS 210 at 11 am vs 13 at 2:30 pm.

Other department news

We are thrilled that both our current visitors have agreed to stay at Whitman for another year. We are in the process of proposing to search for a fifth tenure-track faculty member next year, while I will be on sabbatical.

The tenure-track faculty were hard at work developing a new curriculum over the last summer and fall. That curriculum has now been approved by the faculty. Watch for future blog posts concerning the contents and rationale of the new curriculum, as well as our transition plan.