Education in Informatics at Sofia University - current status and future plans

Abstract

The paper presents some real experiences, emerging models and lessons learnt based on the case of Sofia University - Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (FMI), and its partners. Sofia University has always played a very important role for the development of the country. The university experiences a lot of challenges related to the overall transformation of the economic and social system in the country, the changing models of education, the new role of the universities in the knowledge-based society and the great demand for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) specialists. Sofia University is also challenged by the opportunity to be actively involved in the development of the European space of higher education. The outcomes of an internal university project aimed at the establishment of ACM/IEEE based BSc programs in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Systems are described and analyzed. Some experience in developing a layer of MSc programs as a live link to the professional ICT society and ICT industry is also described. Some future plans for the development of the Computing Curricula and its coordination with the European ICT education, research and innovation agenda are presented as well.