Congratulations on your admission to Colorado State University! As you complete your final months of high school, I am writing to share my thoughts on the community you are about to enter, the journey you are set to begin, and a few action items you can take to set yourself up for success in college.

When you arrive at CSU, you will find that our computer science community is one of the largest on campus with over 800 majors. Our home is a gleaming glass structure in the heart of campus, with breathtaking mountain views. The Computer Science Building is the perfect setting to engage in your coursework and get involved in our active, tight-knit community. I encourage you to try out ACM, ACM-W, Hashdump, VR/AR, or any other of our numerous student organizations. You will also notice that we have many teams that participate in programming competitions, and students constantly attending conferences, career fairs, and research events. These opportunities will provide you with ways to build leadership and pursue career possibilities.

Undergraduate students are welcome to participate in research with our award-winning faculty. Current research opportunities are available in artificial intelligence, software engineering, bioinformatics, high performance computing, and human centered computing, to name a few. Our graduates have earned jobs at Google, Microsoft, HP, and are entrepreneurs in their own right. Some choose to continue in their research and are now part of the faculty and staff within our program as well as many others across the nation. We are excited to have you as part of the amazing community in our department, on campus, and around the globe!

As you prepare for your arrival on campus in the fall, I encourage you to think about how you will use your time here, what challenges you will pursue, how you will change, and what you might do to contribute to the computer science community.

Finally, I recommend that you look at the College of Natural Science Learning Community. It is a science discovery community that boasts a number of computer science majors, with specialty floors focusing on diversity within the sciences. Each year, students work on projects from building Tesla coils to designing video games. Together with residence life, our college works at providing you with the tools and support you need to chase the projects you are most passionate about. The Learning Community is hosted in Laurel Village, the newest residence halls on campus. You must apply separately to live in this residence hall, and because it is an extraordinary program, we encourage you to apply early!

We invite you to come to campus and explore our program and the resources and opportunities that Colorado State University provides through Choose CSU. Our students and advisors will be available to discuss our programs in more detail. If those dates don’t work for you, feel free to reach out to our department with any questions.

With all of this information and a few action items of your own, you have an opportunity to be a part of an extraordinary place that will expand your horizons as a student and prepare you for your future career.

Craig Partridge
Department Chair

Sign up for one of the ChooseCSU dates. We’re excited to see you!

Visit the College of Natural Sciences Learning Community.

Commit to CSU. Welcome to computer science and the CSU Ram family!