College of Engineering computer facilities available to Computer Science majors include six general purpose labs containing Silicon Graphics, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, PC, and Macintosh workstations. A seventh lab is restricted to Computer Science graduate students only. A variety of software tools are available including a full compliment of UNIX utilities, X windows tools, GNU software, Oracle relational database, Wavefront computer animation software, Java development environment, AI programming libraries and shells, HP SoftBench for computer aided software engineering, and other programming tools. The College of Engineering maintains a help desk staffed with knowledgeable student assistants who can answer questions about computing facilities. The department has a separate computer networks laboratory which allows students hands-on experiences in configuring and reconfiguring various types of networks, and the analysis of data obtained from network analyzers.
Users have access to system tools for advanced network experiments.
The computer industry holds the department in high regard in part because of its active participation in the Cooperative Work Experience Program. They receive normal employee salary and academic credit for their valuable experience. Given the current expansion of science and technology, employment of trained computer scientists is expected to remain very high.