By Marguerite Girandola
Staff Reporter
This past week, Sacred Heart University announced the launch of the new School of Computing. The new addition to the university will include two graduate programs and four undergraduate programs. This establishment comes as the whole university is continuing to expand.
According to the recent press release, the school will offer a master’s in computer science and information technology and a master’s in cyber security.
Computer science, information technology, game design and development and computer engineering are the undergraduate programs offered.
“I am so proud and ecstatic to be a computer science major at this moment. Campus has been expanding in so many wonderful ways these past few years and now, my own area of study is following suit,” said junior Alaina Silveri. “I can’t wait to see all this new program has in store for not only Sacred Heart’s future, but also my own.”
Silveri is not the only one who is enthusiastic about the new school that has climbed its way to being one of the most populated programs at the university.
“We’re most excited about expanding our curricular footprint in this way, leveraging current strengths of our existing programs while being able to offer programs that were heretofore unavailable at Sacred Heart University,” said Robin Cautin, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The curriculum will stress certain areas of study as well as provide cutting edge technology resources to students in the program.
“The emphasis will be on software engineering, cyber security, game design and state of the art programming including scripting languages like Python,” said Dominick Pinto, Director of The School of Computing.
Python is a high-level scripting language that is widely used and allows users to express concepts in fewer lines of code than other scripting languages.
“I think that gaining knowledge especially on cyber security and software engineering is very important in this day in age because today’s society is extremely dependent on technology,” said Silveri. “That being said, I think that this program will open many doors in the future for a lot of its students taking advantage of the new school’s offerings.”
The new school will be directed by Pinto who has been with the university for 40 years and a department chair for computer science for 29 years. He has received multiple teaching awards over the course of his teaching career.
“I have seen the program grow tenfold since 1987 and expand our offerings exponentially,” said Pinto. “I love to advise and mentor students and try to get to know as many of the students as possible. We now have almost 300 international graduate students which is a tribute to the faculty and administration of the school.”
Pinto tries to meet with every student of the program at least once a year.
“The establishment of a School of Computing is the result of steady enrollment growth in computer science-related fields, as well the unyielding dedication and talent of our faculty and staff,” said Cautin. “It’s more precise to say that it’s a beginning of an exciting new chapter in the evolution of The College of Arts and Sciences and of Sacred Heart University more generally.”
President John Petillo is also excited for the growth of the new school.
“This is the logical next step for these rapidly growing programs that are now housed in the Computer Science & Information Technology department,” said Petillo in a press release.
The School of Computing is effective immediately and the new undergraduate computer-engineering program will begin in the fall of 2017.
