The Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at Michigan State University is a unit within the College of Engineering.  The mission of the Department consists of three interrelated components: providing the highest quality instruction to our undergraduate and graduate students, conducting leading-edge research in computer science and engineering, and providing leadership and service to our professional communities. We are committed to excel in all three components of this mission.

Instruction.The CSE Department presently has 25 tenure-stream faculty members and each year awards approximately 100 BS, 40 MS, and 10 PhD degrees in Computer Science.  In addition, the Department administers an undergraduate Computer Engineering degree program jointly with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  The high quality of our undergraduate and graduate programs is due to three major guiding principles.  First, almost all of our courses are taught by full-time faculty members, and therefore reflect cutting-edge developments in computer science research.  Second, class sizes are kept small to foster better communication between the students and the instructor.  Third, we place a heavy emphasis on hands-on learning: our instructional laboratory facilities are extensive and state-of-the-art, due to continual investment in upgrades and replacements.  Moreover, most courses include scheduled laboratory sessions to provide students with exclusive access to these facilities, with an instructor or teaching assistant available to provide support and answer questions.  Graduates of our program are heavily recruited by Fortune 500 companies, as well as by other universities for graduate study and faculty positions.

Research. With most of its growth taking place over the last 15 years, the CSE Department is a young and research-active department.  The CSE faculty members are graduates of many of the top departments in the country, and all 25 are currently conducting externally-funded research.  The Department is home to nine research laboratories, with annual research expenditures exceeding $3.5M.  Research areas of particular strength are software engineering, formal methods, mobile computing, distributed systems, computer networking, biometrics, image processing, multimedia technologies, genetic algorithms, machine intelligence, and robotics.  Funding sources include a broad spectrum of federal agencies (including NSF, DARPA, ONR, DOE, AFOSR, NASA, NSA), several Michigan government agencies, and numerous corporate sponsors.  Many faculty are also involved in interdisciplinary research projects, working with colleagues in the College of Engineering, in other colleges across the campus (Medicine, Law, Business, Communication Arts, and Natural Science) and at other universities.  The faculty are aided in this research by an outstanding group of graduate and undergraduate research assistants.  Approximately half of the 150 graduate students are in the Ph.D. program, facilitating long-term research contributions.  Finally, the number of faculty in the Department continues to grow, enabling us to strengthen existing research areas and expand into new ones.

Service. CSE faculty members help the community in several ways.  They serve on MSU, College and Department committees to help shape the University. They serve on editorial boards of many top journals and help to organize numerous international conferences and workshops.  In addition, CSE faculty often serve on review panels for the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, as well as on accreditation boards and other bodies involving computer science education.  CSE faculty serve the broader community through a variety of outreach activities involving local schools, businesses, and non-profit organizations. Moreover, their collective research activities address a number of problems that are important to the Nation's security and quality of life. Example application domains include protection of critical infrastructures from cyber-terrorism, biometrics to enhance security systems, “intelligent” robots for search and rescue operations, cataloguing the human genome, and improving the quality of software used in safety-critical systems.

CSE Department Bylaws