Computers are everywhere these days. In response to that phenomenon, St. Lawrence is offering students a new interdisciplinary computer science major that demonstrates the applicability of the computer to all aspects of life. Computers are everywhere and will continue to be. One of our important tasks is to know how to use them, said Brian Ladd, visiting mathematics professor and a computer scientist. It is the study of problem-solving, and the major is directed toward teaching students how to use the computer as a tool to do this, Ladd said.
Computer science gives students the ability to look things up and learn things.
We try to teach you to teach yourself. Finding the answer to a problem, he explains, is sometimes not as important as knowing how to find it. Its origin is in a machine, but its existence does not depend logically on that machine. Rather, like all the liberal arts, computer science depends on the will of human beings to ask certain kinds of questions and to seek their solutions in certain ways. The cognitive patterns it employs are as old as the human thought process and as new as the next flash of creative insight.