Hardware Courses and the Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum at Small Colleges

Hardware courses have always been a part of the undergraduate Computer Science (CS) curriculum at small colleges. However, these courses are often viewed by many faculty members either as a necessity to satisfy accreditation requirements or, at best, as a traditional but useless part of the CS program in liberal arts settings. The material in these courses is often considered selfcontained, and the relationship with other courses in the CS curriculum is rarely emphasized. In this paper we take a closer look at the place and relevance of hardware courses in the CS curriculum of small colleges.