History

The Carleton University School of Computer Science was established in 1980 under the leadership of six cross-appointed faculty members from the departments of Mathematics, Commerce, and Systems Engineering and Administrative Computing. John Neilson served as the School’s inaugural Director.

Initially, the School offered a Bachelor of Computer Science (B.C.S.). The curriculum was designed to give the students a choice of one of five options or streams with a common core. The original options were: Software, Hardware, Theory of Computing, Scientific Applications, Management and Business Systems. These streams equipped students with the theoretical and practical expertise sought by Canada’s rapidly growing software industry. Of the 1500 applications received annually, only 60 students were admitted to the program.

Housed in the Herzberg building – named for Gerhard Herzberg, a former Chancellor of Carleton and Canada’s first Nobel Prize winner for natural sciences – the School initially operated without laboratories, relying instead on the university’s mainframe computer. But as the B.C.S. program gathered momentum and faculty numbers increased, so too did the requirements for upgraded classrooms and equipment.

Within a few short years, the School moved to new quarters in Herzberg. Access to new laboratories with stand-alone 8-bit CP/M based microcomputers, on which the introductory courses were based, positioned the School among the first departments in Canada to fully recognize and embrace the microcomputer revolution.

In 1984, the School introduced a Master of Computer Science (M.C.S.), offered jointly with the University of Ottawa. The following year, a facility was custom-designed in Herzberg with additional space for laboratories, conference rooms, and offices for administrators and graduate students. The Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Computer Science (OCICS) was then formed in 1987 to oversee the joint Master’s and promote collaborative research in computer science among the two universities.

In the mid-80s, the School of Computer Science and its faculty members John Pugh, Wilf Lalonde and Dave Thomas took a leading role among Computer Science programs by introducing Smalltalk, an object-oriented language, into its courses. John Pugh, Wilf Lalonde, and instructor Paul White later went on to create The Object People. With offices in Ottawa, Raleigh in North Carolina, Southampton in England, and Bonn in Germany, the company did worldwide training, consulting, and custom development in Smalltalk and Java. The company was later split up and acquired by BEA and WebGain. Dave Thomas founded Object Technology International (OTI), later acquired by IBM. Together OTI and IBM developed many Smalltalk and Java development tools that ultimately resulted in Eclipse, an open-source tool platform and integrated development environment.

The School achieved another milestone when, in 1988, it added a co-operative education stream to the B.C.S. program, making it the first significant co-op initiative at Carleton. Students in the program benefited from the university’s close proximity to Canada’s high-tech sector by gaining up to 20 months of professional experience at some of North America’s top I.T. companies.

In 1990, a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science was introduced and offered jointly with the University of Ottawa. In 2003, the School became the first in Canada to make the Information Systems Professionals of Canada (I.S.P.) designation an integral part of the B.C.S. program. A decade later, the School launched the Institute for Data Science, a major cross-university initiative.

In 2015, the School of Computer Science celebrated 35 years at Carleton University. Over the years, the School has developed a strong national and international reputation for its collaboration with other institutions, partnerships with industry, and research strengths.

We invite you to browse our notable highlights below and read more about the history of Carleton University.