Computer Science (BS)

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Offered by the Department of Computer Science , College of Arts and Sciences .

Admission to the Program

Formal admission to the major requires a cumulative grade point average of 2.00 (on a 4.00 scale) and departmental approval.

University Requirements

120 credit hours with minimum 2.00 cumulative GPA (Undergraduate Academic Regulation 2 )
Completion of all requirements for a major (Undergraduate Academic Regulation 9 )

AU Core Requirements

Completion of AU Core foundation requirements (Undergraduate Academic Regulation 8.2-8.6 )
Completion of AU Core Habits of Mind requirements (Undergraduate Academic Regulation 8.7 )
Completion of AU Core integrative course requirements (Undergraduate Academic Regulation 8.8-8.11 )

For additional information, see AU Core Curriculum .

Major Requirements

62 credit hours with grades of C or better, including at least 40 credit hours at or above 300-level

Course Requirements

Introductory Core (14 credit hours)

Upper-Level Core (10 credit hours)

Calculus (4 credit hours)

Complete 4 credit hours from the following:

Statistics (4 credit hours)

Complete 4 credit hours from the following:

Content Domains (12 credit hours)

Complete 12 credit hours with one course from four of the following content domains:

Computational Media

CSC-470 Game Programming (3)

Computational Science

Cyber Security

Ethics and Responsibility

CSC-484 Ethical and Legal Issues in Computing (3)

Graphics and Visual Computing

Human Computer Interaction

Information Management

Intelligent Systems

Systems Design

Systems Development

Concentration (12 credit hours)

Complete 12 credit hours at or above 300-level, with no more than 3 credit hours of internship, independent study, or independent reading, from the following, or other approved courses:

Note: Students may develop an individual sequence of courses, which may include courses outside the discipline that contain substantive content which expands or extends their understanding of the discipline of Computer Science. Examples of individually-designed concentrations include but are not limited to data science, game programming, cyber-security, computer forensics, international service, management consulting, entrepreneurship, neural sciences, physics, mathematics, economics, government computing, environmental studies, computer graphics design, bioinformatics, multimedia computing, or technical writing.

Capstone (6 credit hours)

CSC-493 Computer Science Capstone Project (3) (6 credit hours required)

Combined Computer Science (BS) and Computer Science (MS)

American University offers students the opportunity to earn both undergraduate and graduate degrees through its combined bachelor’s/master’s programs. For more information, see Admission to a Combined Bachelor’s / Master’s Program and Combined Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees of this catalog.

In addition to meeting the minimum university requirements for combined bachelor’s/master’s programs:

Admission is open to undergraduate computer science majors with a minimum grade point average of 3.20. Applicants must have completed the following by the end of the junior year: