University of Hawaii, Hilo

The University of Hawaii at Hilo began as a branch of the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1947 and underwent a number of name changes prior to being organized in 1970 under its present name. UH Hilo is a part of Hawaii's ten campus system of higher education. Located in Hilo, it incorporates a four-year College of Arts and Sciences, a four-year College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Natural Resource Management, a College of Hawaiian Language, and an expanding College of Continuing Education and Community Service.

Outside magazine, a national lifestyle publication, has named UH Hilo one of the 40 best colleges in North American in its September 2003 issue. UH Hilo, the only Hawaii school to make the honor roll, ranked No. 19 among "the coolest places to work, play, study, party and live. U.S. News and World Report ranked UH Hilo sixth among national liberal arts colleges in campus diversity in its 2004 edition of the “America’s Best Colleges” guidebook. The University was also tied for fourth in percentage of international students with 12 percent of the school’s total degree-seeking undergraduates.

The Computer Science Department offers a B.S. degree in Computer Science. It has about 140 majors, including students enrolled statewide in its distance education program. The program includes lots of math, science, and liberal arts as well as computer science. First year students begin with an overview of the field of computer science, and then move into object-oriented programming in C++, a popular computer language. As they pursue the degree, they learn much more than programming - things like the study of algorithms (step-by-step procedures) to do important computing tasks, how the computer itself is organized and how the system software that "drives" the computer works, the mathematical theory underlying computer science, how to design and implement databases, and the evolving issues in computer networking.