Overview

Students in good standing are permitted (and in some cases encouraged) to take one or two independent studies courses. Generally the independent studies course is one in an area for which no regular course is offered (e.g. Blockchain, Type Theory, Action Semantics, Artificial Life, Modal Logic, Constraint Programming) and in which you are genuinely interested.

This page has information for students wishing to do independent studies courses under my supervision. Other faculty members will no doubt have different requirements.

Objectives

At the end of an independent studies course you will have attained mastery of the chosen subject matter to the degree expected from a student taking a traditional course for about the same number of units.

Independent studies courses do not necessarily require research that breaks new ground in a subject area. That’s nice, but not required. It is required for a thesis or dissertation, however.

Requirements

The foremost requirement is that you do the proper amount of university quality work for the number of units you are taking. Do not expect a good grade for putting off everything until the last two weeks and hacking together a project.

You are expected to read at least:

• Most of one or two classic textbooks in the subject area
• Two professional-oriented books (e.g. from O’Reilly or Prentice-Hall PTR)
• Six (preferably more) papers from journals or conference proceedings. Half should be “classic” papers that started the discipline; the rest should cover modern topics.
• Twenty or so encyclopedia articles on topics in your area. Wikipedia is okay, but try others. Blog entries or Medium articles by famous people are okay if they are long enough.

You are required to generate:

• Answers to 40-60 textbook problems. Avoid the trivial “Check your Understanding” type of questions that generate one to ten word answers. Half the problems, though, can be of the short answer or “solve a relatively easy math problem” variety; the rest should require 15 or more minutes of thought.
• A book review (3-5 pages)
• A short paper (5-6 pages) overviewing or summarizing the subject area. Cover the major players in the field and the current uses of the technology today.
• A longer paper (10 pages) in which you describe one of the problems you are working on in your project. The paper will have code fragments in it.
• A project, and associated documentation (top-level architecture diagrams, etc.)
• An annotated bibliography of 40 or so sources that are important in your area. You do not have to read all of them, but you do have to put together a useful list. I assume you will acquaint yourself with at least some of them. (Don’t stuff this list with web sites.)

During the semester:

• Each week, send me a very short email with a bullet-point summary of what you did all week (a progress report of sorts). If you prefer, you may keep a blog instead, as long as it is updated frequently.
• Meet with me every two weeks to discuss your progress.

On the last day of the semester, you are to submit a portfolio, either electronic (preferably a GitHub Wiki), or in a binder (with dividers), neatly organized, and containing, in order:

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• One page summary of the course
• List of the books you read
• Reprints of six of the journal articles (if making a paper portfolio)
• Book review
• Your short paper
• Your long paper
• Exercises and solutions
• Overview of your project architecture
• Link to your project repository (if making a paper portfolio)
• The annotated bibliography

You must prepare yourself for a 15 minute informal “oral report” (I don’t want to call it an “oral exam”) in which we will discuss one-on-one what you have learned and what you have accomplished.

Grading

Your grade will be weighted on the following:

• 80% on the portfolio, as described above
• 10% on the timeliness and quality of your weekly reports (and blog, if you choose to do one)
• 10% on your final oral report

Your grade will be assigned on the quality according to the university grading system, which was, as of 2009, the following:

Grade	Undergraduate	Graduate
A (−)	Superior	Superior
B (±)	Good	Satisfactorily demonstrated potential for professional achievement in field of study
C (±)	Satisfactory	Passed the course but did not do work indicative of potential for professional achievement in field of study
D	Poor
F	Failure	Failure

Some Past Courses

Here are some of the courses I’ve supervised in the past (U=undergraduate, G=graduate). The list isn’t necessarily complete. Not only have I likely forgotten a few courses, but I’ve also purposely left off all of the independent studies courses that are just like regular courses, taken by students that have transferred into the Computer Science major from another major or university, studied abroad, or have otherwise found the need to take courses out of sequence.

Term	Title	U/G	Students
Spring 2024	Concatenative Programming Languages	U	Natalie Lau
	Concatenative Programming Languages	G	Julian Gonzalez
Spring 2022	Web Framework Implementation	G	Marco Berardini
Fall 2021	Web Framework Architecture	G	Marco Berardini
Spring 2021	React Web and Mobile Applications	U	Maya Pegler-Gordon
	Modern Compiler Engineering	G	Marco Berardini
Spring 2019	Algorithms Laboratory	U	Sage Strieker, Merissa Tan, Evan Mitchell, Nico Raymundo, Sam Gibson, Donovan Moini, Ian Lizarda
Fall 2018	Type Systems in Programming Languages	U	Justin Torres
	Mutual Distrust Cloud Systems	U	J Goocher
Spring 2018
	Blockchain Internals	U	Megan Karbowski
	Embedded Systems and Controls	U	Anthony Keba
	Game Development	U	Kevin Metelus
	Python Scripting for Post-Production	U	Nicholas Sy
	Modern Web Applications	U	Cherrell Finister
	GPU Architecture and Computing	G	Gurinder Chauhan
Spring 2017	Machine Learning	U	Natalia Dibbern, Juan Neri
Spring 2016	Survey of Modern Programming Languages	U	Eileen Choe
	Algorithms Laboratory II	U	Mattie Coccia
	Mobile Application Development	U	Matt Flickner, Jeff Fennell
Fall 2015	Advanced Topics in Programming Languages	U	Alex Schneider
	Internet Radio Security	U	Alex Schneider
Spring 2015	Game Programming in Unity 3D	U	Gabriel Gonzalvez, Patrick Sullivan
	Distributed Computing	U	Alex Schneider
Fall 2014	Mind, Brain, and Computation	U	Jackson Souza
Spring 2014	Web Application Architecture	U	Rachel Rivera, Alex Schneider, Mattie Coccia, Stephen Smith
	Algorithms Laboratory	U	Rachel Rivera, Alex Schneider, Mattie Coccia, Andrew Akers
Spring 2013	Distributed Computing Practicum	U	Andy Won
	Algorithms Laboratory	U	Jasmine Dahilig
Fall 2012	Computer Networks	U	Tyler Nichols, Eric Jaso
Spring 2012	Data Mining for Quantitative Financial Analysis	U	Monty Zimmerman
Spring 2011	Web Application Development	U	Rich Mautino
Fall 2010	Address Resolution Protocol	G	Daryoush Shokrgozar
Fall 2009	Enterprise Video Management	U	Kelly Sutton
	Logic, Language, and Computation	U	Kelly Sutton, Gary Hatter, George Chahrouri, Dan Moore
Spring 2009	Game Programming	U	Chris Mueller
	Scripting Languages	G	Rich Rolston
Fall 2008	Game Programming	U	Evan Fishman
	Computer Networks	U	Derek Smith
Fall 2007	Enterprise Computing Architecture	U	Kaniel Yano, Steve Smith, Michael Lovrovich
	Scripting Languages	U	Loren Abrams
Spring 2007	Scripting Languages	U	Tim Lambert, Andrés Buriticá, Patrick Falls
Fall 2006	Enterprise Computing Architecture	U	Andrés Buriticá
Spring 2006	Enterprise Computing Architecture	U	Matt Werner, Mike Megally
Fall 2005	The Semantic Web	G	Paul Bull
Spring 2005	Wireless Technologies	G	Joephy Hoang
	Internet Technologies	U	Matt Glaser, Dominick Guzzo, Jason Lake, Derek Springer
Fall 2004	Firmware Technologies	U	Mark Kolich
	Network Security	G	Prabhu Anbanathan
	Programming Language Semantics	G	Brian Birmingham
Fall 2003	Advanced Design Patterns	U	Chris Kane, Zac Propersi
Spring 2003	Internet Security	G	Sinu Ranasinghe
	RISC Architecture	U	Will Ready, Masahji Stewart, George Melika
Spring 2002	Advanced Three Dimensional Graphics	U	Joey Davis, Vlad Galyuz
Fall 2001	Distributed Systems	U	Bill Hamor
Spring 2001	Component Technologies	U	Zach Kuhn
	Enterprise Computing	U	John Sullivan
	Microprocessors	G	Shoki Souri
	Database Systems	G	Shoki Souri
Fall 2000	Embedded Systems Software	G	Robert Hayes
Spring 2000	Windows NT Internals	U	Dirien Barcenas
Spring 1999	Realtime Design Patterns	G	James Sanchez
Fall 1997	Type Theory and Higher Order Logic	G	Robert Bauer
	Internet Technologies	U	Caskey Dickson
Spring 1997	Modal and Temporal Logics	G	Robert Bauer
	Concurrent and Distributed Programming	U	Neil Rotstan, Tony Shaheen
	Three Dimensional Graphics with OpenGL	U	McKay Stewart
Spring 1996	Compiler Construction II	G	Lida Soopikian
Spring 1995	Introduction to Three Dimensional Rendering	U	Michael Fair
Fall 1994	Object Oriented Design and Eiffel	G	David Lacey
Summer 1994	Topics in Programming Languages: ML	G	Revital Elitzur
Spring 1994	Distributed Object-Oriented Databases	G	Eric Shulman
Fall 1993	Advanced Compiler Design	G	Scott Karlin
	Topics in Programming Languages: Ada 9X	G	Jodene Sasine
Summer 1993	User Interface Design	G	Nils Sandoy
Spring 1993	Chaos and Fractal Geometry	G	David Coca
Fall 1992	Object Oriented Language Implementation	G	Dean Allingham
	Concurrent Programming in Ada	G	Dean Allingham
	Software Engineering Environments	U	Masroor Malik
	Object Oriented Programming	U	Masroor Malik
	Object Oriented Databases	U	Elias Kent
Spring 1990	Functional Programming Languages	U	Frances Thierot
Spring 1987	Software Engineering and Ada	U	Paula Bennett, Tim Prendergast