We hope you had a phenomenal summer break and are ready for an exciting Fall 2023 semester! Classes begin Wednesday, September 6th. Please don't hesitate to reach out to your advisors with questions, concerns, or just to check in!

A course shows “available seats”. Why can’t I enroll? 

If a course is waitlisted and shows “available seats”, those seats will be given to students on the waitlist. If you enroll or swap into a course that is waitlisted with available seats, you will be placed on the waitlist.

When are seats given away? 

Daily waitlist processing resumes starting today (August 28, 2023). Make sure to check your wisc.edu email address if you are on a waitlist for any notices regarding enrollment.

How do I enroll?

You will not be automatically enrolled in the course – you must enroll through the enroll app. The waitlist invites expire after 1-2 days, so make sure to enroll right away.

What if I absolutely need this course? 

Please work with your advisor. Advisors cannot let you off a waitlist in appointments, but can discuss options with you.

DOIT Software Training for Students (STS)

Need to learn a required software for class?

Want extra guidance with a coding, data, or design project?



STS can help!

Software Training for Students (STS) is a FREE service on campus that helps UW-Madison students with their software questions relating to either course projects or personal interests. Our team of student trainers provide assistance with software like R/RStudio, Python, HTML/CSS, Excel, Photoshop, Illustrator, among many others. 

Drop-in to our STS Office Hours at DesignLab (2^nd floor of College Library) to receive 1-on-1 help with assignments and general tech questions, or register for any of our workshops at https://sts.doit.wisc.edu!

Pop-Up Career Advising with SuccessWorks!

In this 2-credit course, you'll work in a small team with other UW students to co-lead a weekly CS club for 4th-5th graders at a nearby Elementary school or Community Center.  

The clubs focus on teaching kids basic CS concepts and how to create projects (e.g., animated stories and games) in Scratch. Scratch is a highly visual programming environment specifically designed for novice programmers. Scratch will be easy for you to learn quickly -- it has the control structures, variables, and lists you're all familiar with. If you're curious, you should check it out at http://scratch.mit.edu -- it is free and has lots of examples.

The UW "lecture" will be held from 5:30 - 7:00 on Wednesday evenings. In that "lecture" time, you'll acquire skills to help you run a more effective and rewarding club.

Signing up for this course is a commitment! To run great clubs, we need to precisely match UW students with different sites and we need to ensure we have the right number of UW students (usually 3) at each club. If you drop the course shortly before the semester starts (or even worse, after the semester begins), you may disrupt the success of one of the clubs.  

You should NOT sign up for this course as a placeholder in your schedule if you think you might not stay enrolled.

To sign up for this course, you should be fairly comfortable speaking loudly and clearly in front of a group of about 16 kids. You will then be responsible for co-leading (with 2 other UW students) the weekly club at a local site. You'll need to have free time in your schedule on one afternoon each week. The day of the week you are available will determine which site you volunteer at. The clubs start about 3 weeks after our UW classes begin.

When you enroll in CS 402, you will pick a particular (lab) off-site section that corresponds to a particular club day and time. Each section has two meetings scheduled: a common lecture Wednesday evenings from 5:30 - 7:00 and an off-site meeting that corresponds to your club day and approximate starting time (the club times are somewhat different than the lab times to account for some of your transportation time to the club). 

For Fall 23, we have the following clubs: The starred clubs still have openings!

Lab 301: Sun Madison Children's Museum (100 N Hamilton St) 2:30 - 3:30

​**Lab 313: Mon Eagle School (5454 Gunflint Trail, Fitchburg) 3:25 - 4:25

               OR Westside Elementary(1320 Buena Vista Dr, Sun Prairie 3:30 - 4:30

Lab 321: Tues Stephens Elementary (120 S Rosa Rd) 2:30 - 3:30

​**Lab 324: Tues Goodman Community (214 Waubesa St.) 3:30 - 4:30

Lab 325: Tues Shorewood Elementary (1105 Shorewood Blvd.) 3:40 - 4:40 

​**Lab 331: Wed Crestwood (5930 Old Sauk Rd) 2:45 - 3:45

                OR Anana (6323 Woodington Way) 2:45 - 3:45 

                OR Thoreau Elementary (3870 Nakoma Rd.) 2:50 - 3:50 

Lab 332: Wed Randall Elementary (1802 Regent St.) 2:40 - 3:40 

Lab 334: Wed Van Hise Elementary  (246 S. Segoe) 3:35 - 4:35 

Our clubs have been incredibly successful for the past few years and many kids, parents, and teachers are interested in learning more. We usually teach more than 200 kids about CS each semester!

If you are not sure whether or not you'd like to do this, I suggest watching this video that shows off how much fun the kids have in our clubs!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P87zSkOwLkI

Computer Sciences Open House & Ice Cream Social

Wednesday, Sept 6th: 1 pm - 4 pm, CS Building Lobby

Computer Sciences Student Org Fair

Tuesday, Sept 12th: 1 pm - 3 pm, CS Building Lobby

DOE Quantum Information Science Career Fair

Wednesday, September 13: 11 am - 5 pm

Computer Sciences Major Declaration Session

Friday, September 15: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm, CS Room 1325

Interested in Doctoral Studies?

McNair Scholars Program Opportunities Available!

Low/Non-Programming Jobs In Tech, Data and Analytics

When you think about your future, what sort of job(s) do you imagine yourself doing? That’s not an easy question! CS Students often imagine pursuing careers in coding software, but there are so many more options out there! 

If you enjoy working with technology, but do not want to code all day, some career paths to consider are: 



• Business Analysts (BA’s) use language and technical knowledge to define the goals and outline of tech projects. BA’s work closely with technical and non-technical coworkers to ask critical questions, and then work with developers to create tech specifications and design plans. 



• QA Testers may use some or no programming to stress-test large software programs, and to imagine how users might ‘break’ the software. You can think of QA as editors for the Developers’ code. 

• Technical Writers create all the documentation for everyday use of the software. They may also write copy to include in the applications, or may write training manuals for the company. 

• Sales Engineers are the liaison between client and developer, and much like a BA, Sales Engineers identify customer needs to design applications that meet those needs. Some technical knowledge is very helpful, but these roles tend to be more people-facing than code-facing. 

• Usability Designers/Researchers work with the human-facing side of software. Usability specialists investigate how users interact with an application to improve access, ease of use and interactivity. These roles benefit from front-end development knowledge, and may still contribute front-end programming. 

And this is only the beginning - check out What Kind of TDA Job Do You Want? for more details!