Community Colleges Perspectives: From Challenges to Considerations in Curricula Development

Community and Technical Colleges are two-year college institutions in the US that have been at the intersection of many educational initiatives and partnerships, such as K-12, four-year colleges, and workforce/industry partnerships. Community Colleges are notable for their diversity and heterogenous student population, but also for the workforce's influence to disseminate specific curriculum requirements. Therefore, community colleges offer a large variety of computing programs, including computer science degrees, notably Associate in Science (AS) and Arts (AA) (a.k.a. academic transfer degrees). Ideally, these transfer degrees align learning outcomes, objectives, and competencies to the ACM/IEEE curricular guidelines, mainly to create two-year programs, align curricula and ease transferability to four-year colleges. Due to the nature of these degrees, computer science education at the lower-division undergraduate level faces curriculum challenges and emerging opportunities while adopting curricular guideline recommendations. Some of these include the number of transfer hours, the scope of topics in computer science, and the most recent ABET accreditation efforts at the community college level. This discussion aims to identify and recognize additional significant challenges that computer science programs in community colleges face, particularly while adopting curricular guidelines recommendations, such as CS 2023. Moreover, the discussion on this matter will influence the recognition of curricular guidelines and considerations for two-year programs in computer science. Compilation of community colleges' viewpoints and feedback during this conversation will be considered part of the curricular practices "Community Colleges Perspectives: From Challenges to Considerations in Curricula Development" document, featured in the new version of the CS2023: ACM/IEEE-CS/AAAI Computer Science Curricula.