Course Spotlight: CS 1050 Honors
Of the many computer science courses instructed at Georgia Tech, perhaps one of the best was the CS 1050X course. Whoa, rewind for a second… isn’t CS 1050 still being taught. Yes, you’re right; however, the honors course has been stripped away from the offered courses. Taught by none other than the lively Dr. Vijay Vazirani, the course was among the most anticipated and popular courses. Several students, including myself, deferred taking CS 1050 to later semesters just to take the section offered by Dr. Vazirani. The law of supply and demand didn’t help students; with only around thirty slots available and over sixty students attempting to sign up for the course, students would often snipe Oscar every five minutes to check if a spot had opened or if their overrides had been processed. Even after the first week passed, several new faces would appear in class. When these students were asked if they were new, they would reply that they wanted to just sit in on the class and see what it was like. Such has the fame of this course spread throughout the College of Computing. So, what makes this course tick? Let’s take a look.
No course can thrive in popularity without that zing and oomph. True, it’s difficult to lay a finger on exactly what these aspects are, but Dr. Vazirani has been able to harness CS 1050’s sparkle and turn it into something else. Constantly cheerful and encouraging students to perform their best, Dr. Vazirani keeps the classroom entertained. In this classroom, gone are the old ways of teaching where a professor stands up straight and lectures in a monotone voice by drawing dull diagrams and giving PowerPoint presentations to make things more “interesting.” According to Abhishek Shroff, a CS 1050X alum, “[Dr. Vazirani] made sure that no student left behind in the course, while at the same time, ensured that the… ones with more background knowledge had enough to think about.”
In class, Dr. Vazirani usually introduces a concept, which takes about thirty minutes of class, which usually lasts for a total of an hour and a half. The remaining hour is devoted to a solid session of problem solving. By creating a conversational atmosphere where students take a team-based problem solving approach, Dr. Vazirani drives in what the “real” work in the industry is like. In these sessions, Dr. Vazirani presents a series of problems related to the concept described, and challenges the class to arrive at a solution. Patrick Dillon, a student who took the course in the spring of 2009, says that Dr. Vazirani’s methods of teaching “allowed the student[s] to speak their minds as he provided slight nudges and insight to the key aspects of the problem[s].” At the surface, these problems and concepts seem to be superficial. However, as the students solve the problems, they discover gilded treasure troves, where all sorts of seemingly unrelated concepts come together all of a sudden.
Dillon further says that he “firmly believes that the reasoning skills students learn in Dr. Vazirani's classes will continue to be of use for the rest of their lives, either directly applied or as a firm foundation to build upon.” Interestingly, many of the course’s alumni have gone on to work for top tier companies such as Google and Lockheed Martin.
