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Computer Science

Welcome!

The Department of Computer Science maintains a rigorous, state-of-the-art program in Computer Science and Information Technology with eight full-time faculty and more than 250 majors.

We offer research and advanced undergraduate elective courses in computer graphics, artificial intelligence, networks, software engineering, databases, human-computer interaction, game programming, and parallel processing. The hardware and software in our laboratories are continually updated to support our student and faculty needs. By pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree, you can prepare for a rewarding, challenging career in business, industry, or government, or establish a solid foundation for graduate studies and research.

Millersville University began teaching programming courses in 1963. The Computer Science B.S. degree was approved in 1975, and Information Technology B.S. degree with a Health Care Analytics Option was approved in 2020, and the MDST in Data Science was approved in 2020. The Department has graduated over 1,500 majors who have become active, contributing members of the computing profession.

Learn more about Computer Science

At MU, you are more than just a number. Learn how faculty care for their students and prepare them for their careers.

Tutoring Fall 2023

The Department of Computer Science is offering group tutoring both in person and digitally. When tutoring is held, the tutor will be in Roddy 147, helping students on a first-come, first-serve basis. They will also be available through Zoom, Meeting ID: 959-6169-3862 and Discord.

Zoom Tutoring

By Course:

Course	Days
140	Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
161	Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
162	Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
330	Monday and Thursday
362	Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
366	Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
370	Monday and Thursday
380	Thursday
420	Thursday

By Day:

Day (Time)	Courses
Monday (5PM-8PM)	140, 161, 162, 330, 362, 366, 370
Tuesday (5PM-8PM)	140, 161, 162, 362, 366
Wednesday (5PM-8PM)	140, 161, 162, 340, 362, 366
Thursday (5PM-8PM)	140, 161, 162, 330, 362, 366, 370, 380, 420

Introducing the CS Department Discord Community!

The Department of Computer Science has a Discord Community which all students enrolled in Computer Science or Information Technology courses are encouraged to join. Discord is a social platform where people can collaborate and socialize together in text and/or voice channels.

We have premade channels for all courses, social activities, troubleshooting, and more. You can download Discord to your computer, phone, and/or tablet through your device's respective App Store or from https://www.discord.com

To join the Computer Science Department Discord Server, click this button:

JOIN THE DISCORD

Setting Up Development Environments

Trying to get your computer set up for your Computer Science class? We have guides to help you!

Setting Up Development Environments

MU@PACISE 2023

MU students at CPOSC 2023 Briar Sauble, Sam Noggle, and Justin Stevens presented at the PACISE conference Eight MUCS students and three faculty traveled to East Stroudsburg University to participate in the PACISE conference this year. Justin Stevens, Samantha Noggle, and Briar Sauble all presented talks on their honors theses. They did a fantastic job, and Justin's paper won the Best Paper a

ward (for best Faculty Paper, but that's another story...)

We also had two teams compete in the programming contest. The team of Marshall Feng, Samantha Noggle, and Trevor Bender won the competition, solving all ten of the problems in the shortest amount of time, with five "fastest solves", and with 40% of the allotted time remaini

ng! The team of Evan Magill, Ryan Ganzke, and John Hershey came in 4th, solving eight of the problems with two "fastest solves". Congratulations to everyone!

Millersville Computer Science Goes to CPOSC

MU students at CPOSC 2023 Samantha Noggle gives a presentation at CPOSC

The 13th Annual Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) was held on Saturday, April 1st, 2023 at the Ware Center in downtown Lancaster. Millersville University was well-represented with over 15 students and faculty in attendance, along with many, many alumni. Samantha Noggle and Dr. Stephanie Schwartz gave a presentation called "Machine Learning Techniques to Improve Users' Listening Experiences".

CPOSC is organized by many local technology enthusiasts. This year two MUCS alumni, Elyse Ewing (2009) and Emma Montgomery (2018) were two primary coordinators, along with many other alumni who were involved in this great event. We look forward to next year!

John Hynes Completes Department Honors Thesis Defense

Photo of John Hynes During the last year through online instruction, an MU CS senior, John Hynes, was concurrently working on his Departmental Honors Thesis: "A GPU-Accelerated Ray Tracing Engine in Modern C++". John built off of Peter Shirley's Ray Tracing in One Weekend and re-engineered the code to enable GPU parallelism with CUDA.

The ray tracing engine supports different types of objects such as spheres, planes, and triangles; different types of materials such as Lambertian, metal, emissive, and diaelectric; and a custom scene file format. The engine can run on NVIDIA GPUs through CUDA or on multi-core processors.

The code created throughout this thesis is Open Source and available on GitHub: https://github.com/JohnHynes/Thesis

Thesis Abstract:

Ray tracing is a powerful and popular technique used in 3D graphics to simulate realistic light and shadows within a scene. Due to the high amount of computations that are inherent to ray tracing, engines often employ GPU acceleration and other such optimizations to greatly reduce render times, particularly in high-complexity scenes. This paper discusses the benefits and challenges experienced when implementing a GPU-Accelerated ray tracing engine in C++ using modern approaches and tools.

Various Scenes Rendered with John's Ray Tracing Engine

Cyber Defense Organization Qualifies for Regionals

The MUCS Cyber Defense Organization competed in the qualifying rounds of the CCDC (National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition) in March 2018 and placed 6th out of 25 teams. This qualified the team to compete in Regionals where they placed 4th out of 8 teams. This is an outstanding achievement among very stiff competition.

The CCDC asks "student teams to assume administrative and protective duties for an existing “commercial” network – typically a small company with 50+ users, 7 to 10 servers, and common Internet services such as a web server, mail server, and e-commerce site. Each team begins the competition with an identical set of hardware and software and is scored on their ability to detect and respond to outside threats, maintain availability of existing services such as mail servers and web servers, respond to business requests such as the addition or removal of additional services, and balance security needs against business needs. Throughout the competition an automated scoring engine is used to verify the functionality and availability of each team’s services on a periodic basis and traffic generators continuously feed simulated user traffic into the competition network. A volunteer red team provides the 'external threat' all Internet-based services face and allows the teams to match their defensive skills against live opponents." [CCDC Mission]