Advising Information
Advising Notes
These advising notes apply to current students majoring in Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), Electrical Engineering (EE) and the Energy and Power EE emphasis (EP) only. Within Computer Science, some notes may apply only to one of the three tracks: Computer Science (CS-CS), Computer Information Systems (CS-CIS), and Information Security (CS-IS).
Department Petitions for Exception
The department requires an NSME Petition for Exception for several enrollment or graduation requirement exceptions. Students must include a justification with the petition. Petitions are turned in to the CEE/CS Department office in Science III and will be evaluated by the appropriate department subcommittee (CS or ECE).
Dean's Office approval is not needed for these petitions. Petitions and all supporting documentation should be emailed to ceecs@cs.csub.edu for processing. The blank NSME Petition for Exception form is available here: Petition for Exception.
Petitions are required for the following:
- Take a CMPS or ECE course for the fourth time (also attach the campus petition forms from the Academic Petitions Committee)
- Substitute a core course (justification must state hardship/extenuating circumstances that will prevent the student from taking the core course when it is next offered)
Students will be notified of the subcommittee decision by email.
Quarter-to-Semester (Q2S) Transition
CSUB has a Currency of Courses Requirement where courses must be completed within 10 years of the date a degree is awarded. Students must petition to have pre-Q2S courses considered as progress toward a degree, if they were taken 10 or more years ago.
Standing Substitutions
These are standing substitutions for coursework within the CS, CE, and EE majors. Students will still need to fill out an Advising Checklist that lists these substitutions during their grad check process. Note: Some of these substitutions are only for specific catalog years.
- Students can opt to use the elective list from the current catalog on any earlier catalog. This will not show up automatically on myCSUB. Paperwork must be filed with the campus.
- Students can opt to take either the regular calculus (MATH 25xx) or engineering calculus (MATH 23xx) sequence.
- There are several options for ECE students to complete multi-variable and vector calculus: MATH 2330, MATH 2530, MATH 2533, or both MATH 2531+2532.
- For CS-CIS students, MATH 1030 (dual credit precalculus) satisfies the MATH 1040 (precalculus) requirement.
- CMPS 4890 Experiential Prior Learning credit will only count for general elective units in the CS-CIS track (up to 4 units). It will not count as an advanced elective.
General Advising Notes
- Students on older catalogs are strongly encouraged to speak with a major advisor to see if switching to a newer catalog would be beneficial.
- CS and CE students are strongly encouraged to take CMPS 2120 before taking upper-division CMPS or ECE courses.
- Students should view the Program Pathways Mapper (PPM) for recommended courses to take in each term. The roadmaps assume students enter either calculus ready (CS-CS, CS-IS, CE, EE) or pre-calculus ready (CS-CIS). Students who require additional mathematics preparation should speak with a major advisor.
Transfer Information
- Students transferring from a California community college with an Associate's Degree for Transfer (ADT) in Computer Science can complete the CS-CS concentration in 60 semester units. Switching to another CS concentration may increase the units needed for graduation, due to the differences between the concentrations.
- Engineering students transferring from a California community college who have completed the C-ID.net Engineering model curriculum with either the Electrical track for Electrical Engineering transfer students or the Computer track for Computer Engineering transfer students can begin their respective majors at the upper-division level. Exact units needed after transfer will depend on the General Education transfer credit awarded by CSUB.
- Students planning to transfer to one of our programs from Bakersfield College should review the CSUB/BC Articulation Agreements at the bottom of the degree information page and speak with an advisor at either CSUB or BC to plan an academic roadmap.
- For students transferring from colleges in California, check assist.org for existing articulation agreements between CSUB and your college.
- Students who have completed a transfer from another college to CSUB should meet with either a major advisor or the NSME Student Center to verify that your transfer credit was processed correctly.
- Vocational course work such as certifications (MSDN, CompTIA, etc.), training on specific commercial packages (Visual Basic, Word, Access, Excel, Photoshop, etc.), and so forth may transfer for unit credit at the university but DO NOT count towards Computer Science degree requirements.
- The lower-division CMPS programming sequence is taught in C/C++. Several upper-division classes will assume familiarity with these two programming languages, even if transfer credit is awarded for programming courses in Java or another high-level language. The major study room (Sci III 341) and the tutoring center (Sci III 324) have several C/C++ books available for self-study (books must be used in the room and cannot be taken home).
- The specific requirements differ for each degree program. In general, you should try to complete as many lower-division (1000-level and 2000-level) major requirements as possible at your community college.
- CSUB's lower division CMPS and ECE courses map the the following C-ID.net course descriptors. The mappings for cognate courses can be checked at https://c-id.net/courses/search
- Note: EE and CE students may opt to take either C-ID.net COMP 122 or ENGR 120 to transfer in for CMPS 2010. CS students must take COMP 122 to transfer in for CMPS 2010.
| CSUB Course | C-ID.net Number | CS-CS | CS-CIS | CS-IS | CE | EE/EP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMPS 2010 Programming I | COMP 122 or ENGR 120 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| CMPS 2010 Programming II | COMP 132 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| CMPS 2120 Discrete Structures | COMP 152 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| CMPS 2240 Comp. Arch. I | COMP 142 | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| ECE 1616 + 1628 Intro to Engr. | ENGR 110 | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| ECE/ENGR 2070 Electric Circ. | ENGR 260+260L | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |