Computer Science

Engaged Computer Science

Engaged Computer Science takes what you’re learning in your courses and puts it into practice through internships, research, study away, winter term, career exploration, and beyond.

Here’s a sampling of recent projects, field experiences, and post-graduate destinations for computer science majors.

RISE at Oberlin
Research. Internships. Study Away. Experiential Learning.

Ways Computer Science Majors Rise

Research

  • “Designing the CRISP Document Format: Secure Declarative Language for the Web,” Laura Watiker, 2014-15
  • “Identifying Offensive Social Media Posts to Protect Chatbots from Biases,” Sage Vouse, Daniel Firebanks Quevedo and Quinn Barker-Plummer, 2017-19
  • “Towards a Relative-Pitch Neural Network for Chorale Composition and Harmonization,” Sam Goree, 2016-17
  • “Eye Coordination with Frequency Response Beam Tracing,” James Quintana, 2015-16
  • “Making Sense of Glitch Audio,” Judy Jackson, 2017-18
  • “UNAKITE: Scaffolding and Persisting Developers’ Decision Making,” Jane Hsieh, 2018-19

Many of our students engage in research off campus via summer research programs. Recent projects have taken place at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, University of North Carolina, Van Andel Institute, and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

Internships

Numerous computer science students have interned with Google, and current students have also held internships at Amazon, IBM, EA Games, JP Morgan (finance), Optoro (reverse logistics), Bentley Systems (software for architecture, engineering, and infrastructure support), SmallPlanet (mobile app development), Shotspotter (gunfire detection), and many other companies.

Study Away

Computer Science partners with the AIT-Budapest program, which offers a study away experience focusing on computer science and software engineering in the beautiful old city of Budapest, Hungary. Other opportunities include British, Irish, or Australian universities, and for those with strong language skills, French or German universities.

Experiential Learning and Graduate Study

Students attend graduate school in computer science as a way to prepare for careers in research. Eighty percent of PhDs in CS work in industry rather than academia. We currently have alumni at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, University of Washington, University of Pennsylvania, University of California-San Diego, Virginia Tech, and University of Illinois.

Careers

Oberlin alumni work in every corner of the tech industry. Many of our graduates from the last five years work at Google. Other recent alumni are at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Spotify, SoundCloud, Amazon, Epic, Geico, Pivotal, Merrill Lynch, Kabam, Alibaba, and many other companies. Thanks to the generosity of our alumni, we have funding to subsidize student attendance at academic conferences. Some other things we do to help you get started on a career include resume workshops, mock interviews, and connections to alumni.

Fun!

We have a rich, collaborative community among faculty and students. Our students participate in programming contests and hackathons. Our student Majors Committee hosts social and academic events, lab crawls, a t-shirt contest, and an art show every year.