Students on the courses-only track must complete a Program of Study of at least 30 credits. The Program of Study is to be filled out during a student's first semester of graduate school in consultation with his or her advisor.

Credit Requirements

Students on the courses-only track must complete a program of study of at least 30 credits, including

• CS 510, Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science (3 credits)
• CS 515, Analysis of Algorithms (3 credits)

Additionally,

Students on the project track must complete a Program of Study of at least 30 credits which includes at least 26 credits of coursework and exactly 4 credits of CS 575, Project. The Program of Study is to be filled out during a student's first semester of graduate school in consultation with his or her advisor.

Credit Requirements

Students on the project track must complete a program of study of at least 30 credits, including

Students on the thesis track must complete a Program of Study of at least 30 credits which includes at least 20 credits of coursework and exactly 10 credits of thesis. The Program of Study is to be filled out during a student's first semester of graduate school in consultation with his or her advisor.

All tracks leading to the Master's degree require adherence to the following procedures in the section below.

As at most U.S. universities, there are various different levels of requirements students must fulfill on the way to a Master's degree. The requirements established by Montana State University have this structure:

Background

The Master of Science (MS) degree is intended for students who want to pursue careers in computer science at the highest levels of the practice. In general, students with an MS degree receive higher starting salaries and quicker advancement than students with BS degrees. Some companies prefer to hire students with MS degrees. The MS degree also qualifies students to be hired as faculty members at some community colleges and smaller four-year colleges, or to work as adjunct instructors at larger institutions of higher learning.

There are three different tracks to a Master's degree:

• Thesis track
• Project track
• Courses-only track

These three options are summarized in the following table.  To understand all of the requirements for the Master's degree, however, you will also need to read the rest of the information linked in the Master's Degree Menu.

On July 7-9, 2009, Dr. John W. Sheppard and the MSU Department of  Computer Science hosted a meeting of the Diagnostic and Maintenance Control (DMC) subcommittee of the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 20 (SCC20) on Test and Diagnosis for Electronic Systems. The DMC holds four meetings per year at various locations around the US and Europe and is responsible for developing IEEE standards for fault diagnostic systems.