College of Engineering News Room

CSIT TEAm project concludes with 80% degree production increase in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering

In March 2014, UCF, USF, and FIU were awarded $4,858,413 of legislatively appropriated funds by the Board of Governors to address the gap in the demand and supply of workers in the state of Florida in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, and Management Information Systems. The project, titled "CSIT (UCF-USF-FIU) TEAm" was one of four applications selected for funding under the Targeted Educational Attainment (TEAm) Grant Initiative. The goal of the CSIT project was a 67% increase in yearly undergraduate degree production with academic year 2012-2013 as the benchmark year and academic year 2017-2018 as the final target year. UCF was the lead university for this project.

For the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at USF, the production of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Technology graduates increased from 164 graduates in academic year 2012-2013 to 295 graduates in academic year 2017-2018. This was an 80% increase in yearly degrees awarded, a greater increase than the overall project. Overall, for the entire CSIT project the increase was 70% in yearly undergraduate degree production in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, and Management Information Systems for UCF, USF, and FIU combined.

Department undergraduate enrollment increased from 390 students in Spring 2013 to 860 students in Spring 2018, a growth of 120%.

The funding from this project enabled the Department of Computer Science and Engineering to hire additional tenure-track faculty, full-time instructors, and adjunct instructors. The funding also enabled an increase in the number of funded graduate teaching assistants. This growth in faculty size and number of teaching assistants allowed the Department to offer more courses and sections to support the growth in enrollment. Furthermore, because of the great synergism between the three institutions, UCF, USF, and FIU received an NSF $5 million, 5-year (2016-2021) S-STEM grant to increase the success of academically talented and financially needy students in the computing-related disciplines. The USF share of this NSF grant is funding over $1 million in scholarships for undergraduate students in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Technology.