Faculty and students alike have strong opinions about “math in CS”. Faculty are typically concerned about poor preparation and motivation to learn math, while students complain about not seeing applications and wonder what any of it has to do with the software jobs they seek. Math can also serve as a barrier to students from under-resourced K12 systems that are not able to offer the opportunities for mathematical preparation their better-resourced counterparts enjoy. At the same time, the discipline has itself undergone a significant mathematical change: machine learning, robotics, data science, and quantum computing all demand a different kind of math than what’s typically covered in a standard discrete structures course. In sum, there are good reasons to expand and strengthen math requirements for the new CS areas, and equally good reasons to remove unnecessary impediments to students seeking software jobs that employers are struggling to fill.

So … who’s right, and what should departments do? Join us in a participative virtual workshop on mathematics in undergraduate computer science. The workshop will present results from an international survey on this topic, a surprising outcome from an employer survey, and explore potential solutions.