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DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING
FST Science Festival The Computing booth at the FST Science Festival held on March 31–April 1, 2023, featured several engaging games designed to challenge and entertain visitors. One game featured ChatGPT, a sophisticated chatbot, that users could interact with in order to determine if they were speaking with a human or a machine. Another popular game challenged visitors to write Python code to successfully land a space- ship, which proved to be a fun and engaging way to learn about coding. Finally, the Bing image generator game was a hit with visitors, who enjoyed the challenge of trying to generate an image that was similar to the one they were given. Overall, the Computing booth was a great success, showcasing the fun and exciting possi- bilities with computing. AGILITY The Department of Computing (DoC) continues expansion of internship pro- grammes. There are now 12 companies participating in the internship programme. This year, Prof. Daniel Coore taught the Analysis of Algorithms course virtually to students at the Five Islands Campus. The things developed during COVID-19 lockdown as well as the lessons learned from those course offerings allowed us to teach (and assess) effectively by distance. Our postgraduate programmes, Summer School and the NCB-UWI Agile Lab project continue to be income generating for the department. In the 2022/23 academic year, the M.Sc. in Computer Science programme generated a surplus of $6,918,443.81, while the Applied Data Science programme had a surplus of $11,682,126.25. Summer School generated $2,887,276.61 and the Consultancy fund’s balance was $3,671,949.97 at the end of the period. CONCLUSION The Department of Computing has made a worthwhile contribution to the University. It now serves the highest number of students across all academic units within the Faculty of Science & Technology. The Department’s graduates are highly sought after by employers. The Department will need more human and space resources so that it can continue to provide students with a quality education in various computing disciplines. In the short term, the Department requires a computer lab that can seat at least 60 students. Longer term, the Department requires a new building to accommodate its students and staff. The Department also requires an academic establishment that enables it to better serve its student population without relying as much on adjunct staff.
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