• Economic Development/Workforce Demand
  

  There is a Florida state legislative agenda to offer a Master's (MSA) in IT with a specialization in Cloud Computing and Network Virtualization. Discussions started in early summer (2012) with Florida State College in Jacksonville, FSU, and other state and community colleges in Florida to get this worked out as a Professional Master's degree program. The undergraduate programs in these schools will be feeding into our graduate program. This is a major need regionally, and UWF (and particularly Computer Science) was picked as a graduate host since UWF has very strong online offerings. This MSA degree will be in collaborations with COPS and COB and Dr. Pamela Northup, Dean, College of Professional Studies, Dr. Karen Rasmussen, Associate Dean, College of Professional Studies, as well as the Dean of College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jane Halonen, have also been part of this discussion. The department of Computer Science would of course be providing the graduate IT offerings in the areas of Cloud Computing and Network Virtualization. Without a new line, it will be extremely difficult to take up on this legislative agenda, especially because it is extemely difficult to find adjuncts with terminal degrees to teach at the master's level.

• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
  

  Research shows that by 2018 there will be about 134,000 STEM jobs in Florida, up 20 percent from the 112,000 STEM jobs in 2010. The Florida Board of Governors, the State Board of Education and the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity are working together to adopt a consensus state endorsed STEM education plan to close this talent supply gap. Universities will also be rewarded for high STEM degree performance (http://www.flchamber.com/issue/higher-education/).
  
  As can be seen from the data, the Department of Computer Science already has a 249.48% overall increase in student credit hour enrollment in the last five years; a 48% increase in our undergraduate majors and 153% increase in our graduate majors in the last five years. This high growth can probably be explained by the high demand in the workforce for our field (STEM disciplines). In order to be able to keep up with the demand in STEM, and to maintain the quality of our programs, we have to add regular tenure earning faculty.
  
  Though we have grown by an astonishing 249.48%, our number of faculty has gone down from 15 to 13 in the last 5 years. This is effectively down from 15 to 11 since one of our faculty is a Nystul Chair, who only teaches one course per year, and another is our Associate Dean, who teaches at most one course for us. So effectively, our faculty strength is at 75% capacity from where we were 5 years ago. With this growth and decrese in faculty (even after hiring the 3 new faculty last year), it is difficult to offer what we have to offer, let alone handling growth. We literally do not have the capacity to handle any more students unless we get more faculty -- we will have to turn students away. For Spring 2013, most of our offerings are at capacity -- we are struggling with full sections, hence adding students to the notification (waiting) list for classes, but not really having a solution of what to do with these students, since we have no more qualified adjuncts (or faculty) to teach. You will also note that we had only 6 (7.6%) low enrolled sections in 2011/2012. Though the graduate numbers for the low enrolled classes look a little high, I will explain below how these numbers were probably not correctly calculated.
  
  In summary, to handle the demand in the STEM workforce leading to the growth in our enrollment, we will need at least one more tenure track position.

• Accreditation Requirements
  

  Accreditation of our Computer Science (CS) programs in a priority for our department as well as for UWF. We are one of the very few schools in Florida that do not have accreditation. In order to ensure quality of our programs and make sure that our graduates get well placed in this competitive market, we need to attain accreditation within the next 2-3 years.
  
  The shortcomings that we have from an accreditation point of view are: First and foremost, for accreditation in the CIS specialization, ABET requires at least one faculty member with a Ph.D. in CIS. At present we do not have a Ph.D. in CIS, so accreditation in that specialization will be problem for us unless we get a faculty member with a Ph.D. in CIS.
  
  Second, one of our major degree specializations, the IT/IT track, has most of it's courses taught by adjuncts. In fall 2012, 15 of the 23 courses that we offered for our IT program were taught by adjuncts -- that is, 65% of the courses were taught by adjuncts.
  
  If we look at the overall upper division computer science offerings -- the percent of student credit hours taught by adjuncts (and ESC) in 2011/2012 -- this adds up to 56.3%. This means that over half of our student credit hours at the upper level are generated by adjuncts.
  
  It will not be possible to have adjuncts ramp up the courses as per ABET's expectations. We need a regular tenure-track faculty championing these courses, especially at the upper level and in the IT program. And most importantly, we need a Ph.D. in CIS.

• Niche programs with growth potential
  

  The area of security is a major focus areas in terms of workforce demand regionally as well as nationally.
  
  If we could make one hire in the area of security or someone with a security background, this would help our programs grow even further. This could be a person with a CIS degree with a security background -- this would help in the accreditation process as well as growth in the niche areas. This person could also contribute to other areas.

Additional pressure points: (i) Software Engineering (at the graduate level); (ii) no Emerald Coast (EC) presence. Up to a couple years ago, we maintained a presence at the EC, but right now, due to shortage of faculty (and after the faculty who maintained our EC presence resigned), we are not able to maintain a presence at EC. A presence is required for Computer Science at EC.

We have an extremely tough time finding qualified adjuncts to teach in our graduate programs, especially with our Software Engineering and Database Systems graduate programs growing (our graduate programs have grown 201.26% in the last 5 years).

In Spring 2012, we had 7 of our 15 graduate offerings taught by adjuncts (that is, about 50%), and this fall we have 6 of our 18 graduate courses taught by adjuncts. This totals to 13 of 33 courses (39%) for the year. This is a high number for graduate offerings and to be able to maintain the quality of our programs, we cannot expect adjuncts to keep up with research in the area and continuously improve the courses. Infact a few of our courses have already started suffering from this problem since we've had adjuncts teach them for so long. We are desperately looking for ways to address this, but it becomes very difficult without a regular faculty member with a terminal degree.

Also, though the # (or percent) of low enrollment classes at the graduate level in 2011/2012 were shown as 58.1% in this set of data, we did some counting at the departmental level and these numbers appear slightly different. We came up with a count of 17 classes total for 2011/2012, or an average of 4.25 classes/semester. The reason for this difference might be because of the fact that so many faculty offer to help by taking on individual project students and directed study students, but these were counted as regular graduate offerings. So, in summary, our graduate classes are typically pretty full.

If we took the percent of student credit hours taught by adjuncts (and ESC), we get 45.8% -- which is a very high number of adjuncts to have graduate programs depend on.

With our graduate enrollments having grown 201.26%, we regularly have a very tough time making sure that all our required graduate courses are being offered. We need a tenure-earning faculty person with a terminal degree, who can take care of this teaching load. It is easier to find adjuncts to cover the lower level and undergraduate courses, but it is tough finding an adjunct with a terminal degree who would be willing to teach our graduate courses. This has been a continuous problem. Plus, with the increase in the graduate enrollment, we also need faculty who can direct graduate student thesis and projects, and this would have to be a person who is invested in research, hence would be willing do direct student research. This cannot be expected or done by adjuncts who are not invested in research. It is also critical to point out that CS responded nobly a few years ago when Florida's Great Northwest bankrolled a special scholarship program to assist students to complete an express software engineering program, which we anticipated would spike our enrollments but then the enrollments were predicted to dwindle. We were hopeful that the increased enrollment would have justified bringing faculty on board longer term if enrollments stabilized. Happily, enrollments have not gone done but we now feel strapped for qualified faculty to support the growth reported in the tables below.

Will teach three classes (at least one or two at the graduate level) per semester and the rest at the upper level; will be expected to do research and engage students (both graduate and undergraduate students) in research; will contribute to service (curriculum development in the department and help with ABET accreditation).

Presently the courses are being covered by adjuncts. It is extremely difficult to find adjuncts to teach at the graduate level. Sometimes we cannot even offer what we need to offer since we don't have the faculty to teach it -- hence we make substitutions -- this is not good from a program quality perspective or from an accreditation perspective (and will plan on going up for ABET accreditation).

The only degree specialization that is below 15 is IT/Digital Enterprise(DE) -- this has 13 students presently. This degree does not really use any extra resources since all the classes that we offer for this program are used in other programs that we offer. The IT/DE specialization is in collaboration with COB.

Our other programs are highly enrolled: the CS/CS program has 138 students; the CS/CIS program has 97 students; the CS/SE program has 95 students; and our IT/IT program has 118 students.

In summary, at the undergrad level, if after program priorization if it is decided that IT/DE should be eliminated, the department will be okay with deleting that specialization. That should not really affect our enrollment either way.

Our Software Engineering and Database Systems specializations are doing very well, with 77 and 36 students respectively. Our Computer Science specialization also has 12 students currently. If we can have a new hire with a security component, this would help this specialization grow also.

Our other two graduate specializations are in colloboration with COPS: MSA/DBA and MSA/SEA, with 11 and 5 students respectively. We have lots of enquiries about the MSA/DBA program. The MSA/SEA program, however, does not generate much enthusiasm since students often prefer the CS/SE degree. Hence once again, after program priorization, we could delete the MSA/SEA track -- this would not really hurt the department in any way.

* Does not include non-degree specializations (indicated with a † above)

# of FTE Faculty by Tenure Status
	Fall 2008	Fall 2009	Fall 2010	Fall 2011	Fall 2012
Tenure & Tenure Earning	11.0	10.0	10.0	6.0	9.0
Non-Tenure Earning	4.0	4.0	4.0	5.0	4.0

‡ Data not yet available for this term

# (%) of low enrollment courses (undergrad: <20, grad: <15)
	10/11	11/12	12/13
Undergraduate	7 ( 8.8%)	6 ( 7.6%)	11 ( 12.2%)
Graduate	23 ( 47.9%)	25 ( 58.1%)	20 ( 57.1%)

Average Class Size
	Fall 2010					Fall 2011					Fall 2012
	Reg	Adj	TA	ESC	All	Reg	Adj	TA	ESC	All	Reg	Adj	TA	ESC	All
Lower	56.4	27.7	46.0	0.0	45.7	62.8	28.0	0.0	32.0	51.7	47.7	25.3	0.0	0.0	41.0
Upper	37.8	27.6	112.0	25.0	35.6	35.3	31.6	0.0	37.0	33.6	28.0	27.5	0.0	0.0	27.8
Graduate	10.4	12.2	0.0	21.0	11.1	8.3	12.3	0.0	16.0	10.2	12.3	11.3	0.0	14.0	12.1

Percent of student credit hours taught by instructor type
	10/11				11/12				12/13
	Reg	Adj	TA	ESC	Reg	Adj	TA	ESC	Reg	Adj	TA	ESC
Lower	66.8%	27.7%	5.6%	0.0%	71.2%	21.0%	0.0%	7.8%	78.5%	21.5%	0.0%	0.0%
Upper	55.5%	41.4%	1.8%	1.2%	43.8%	47.5%	0.0%	8.8%	61.1%	38.9%	0.0%	0.0%
Graduate	74.9%	17.5%	0.0%	7.6%	54.2%	39.8%	0.0%	6.0%	63.0%	33.9%	0.0%	3.2%
Total	61.5%	34.1%	2.4%	2.0%	52.5%	39.4%	0.0%	8.1%	65.9%	33.7%	0.0%	0.4%