Overview
Interested Coastal Carolina University students at all academic levels (including freshmen!) are welcome to contact me at mmurphy2@coastal.edu for more information about independent study projects. Students in all academic programs offered by the Department of Computing Sciences are welcome to participate, including students in fully online programs. For the most part, it is not necessary to be on the Conway campus in order to work on many of these projects. That said, some projects that involve hardware may require physical presence on the CCU main campus.
Undergraduate Students
Academic credit is available for CSCI 399 (Independent Study) for 1 to 3 credit hours per semester. In general, new students would start at 1 credit hour, increasing credit hours in one of these projects (or another faculty-led project) in future semesters. A time commitment of 50-75 clock hours per semester is expected per credit hour of CSCI 399.
Students in the B.S. Computer Information Systems and B.S. Information Technology degree programs (online or in-person) can count CSCI 399 credits toward the 12 credits of CSCI courses numbered 200 or above for each program. Students in the B.S. Computer Science degree program can count CSCI 399 credits toward the 3 credit requirement of a CSCI course numbered 200 or above.
As an alternative to an independent study, some software projects might be available as choices for the CSCI 490 (Software Engineering II) group project requirement. CSCI 490 projects tend to be a bit more self-contained at the expense of less freedom to explore an application over time.
Graduate Students
For projects at the graduate level, opportunities exist for both capstone course projects (IST 659) and thesis projects (IST 799). The primary difference is the scope of the project, as the thesis option is generally more comprehensive and results in the submission of a thesis in accordance with Graduate School requirements. Please note that some listed projects are intended for undergraduate students and are not suitable at the graduate level.