Algorithms + Organization = Systems

Even though a computer science or computing-oriented degree is unavoidably broken into semesters and courses, we always hope that our students form a holistic picture of the discipline by the time they graduate. Yet we do not have too many opportunities to make this point in a convincing manner. This paper reports our efforts to point out the connections between a seemingly (in the eyes of students) disconnected subset of courses in our degree requirements. In particular, we report on how we have used research papers as the glue between topics covered in our algorithms and systems oriented courses (such as Organization and Computer Networks). Our assessment of the course has shown that students have not only made gains in their understanding and appreciation of meaningful intra-disciplinary connections, but have also advanced in designing empirical experiments (mimicking the methodologies observed in the chosen papers) and reading/writing technical papers