A Liberal Arts Software Engineering Course

This article describes a course in “software engineering” within a liberal arts computer science curriculum. This course stresses a “phenomenological” perspective on software engineering consistent with the view that the liberal arts computer science major should present computer science in the broadest perspective. This course stresses software engineering as an activity with important psychological, social, and ethical components, whereas an analogous course in a school of engineering might place more emphasis on particular techniques and tools. The subtle distinction between software engineering in the liberal arts college and software engineering in a school of engineering can help to clarify the distinction which needs to be made between preprofessional and liberal arts curricula in computer science generally.