Subsections

• Course Requirements.
• Thesis or Project.

Master's Program

The Master's program has been designed to provide firm grounding in theoretical concepts with effective training in current technologies. Students in the Master's program have the flexibility to finish the program in one year of full-time study or to go through the program on a part-time basis. The requirements for the Master's degree are as follows:

Course Requirements.

Master's students are required to take at least ten courses, including the following regular  courses:

• four 200-level or higher-level Computer Science courses taken at Duke, two of which must be in the area of concentration;
• one algorithms course;
• one systems course; and
• two courses taken in a minor field, or in related fields approved by the DGS, outside Computer Science.

Areas of concentration include systems, algorithms, scientific computing, and artificial intelligence. The 10 courses can include at most two thesis/project courses, at most two seminar courses, and at most two 100-level courses, which must be approved by the DGS. No graduate credit is given for courses numbered below 100. All courses counted toward the Master's degree must have a grade of G or better. All first-year Master's students must also attend and participate in a special research seminar course, Computer Science 300, during the first semester.

A course may serve to satisfy more than one requirement. For example, if someone concentrating in systems takes Computer Science 230, it counts as an algorithms course, a 200-level course, and also as one of the two courses needed outside the area of concentration.

Courses can be taken at the University of North Carolina and at North Carolina State University through inter-institutional registration. Such courses require the permission of the Director of Graduate Studies and that the student is registered for an equal number of course units at Duke.

Thesis or Project.

Each Master's student must complete a thesis or a project under the supervision of a faculty member. A thesis usually consists of original theoretical work or a detailed survey of a research topic. A project usually consists of the production and documentation of code to perform a particular task. The student must also complete a written report describing the objectives of the work, the previous state of the art, the results obtained, and (in the case of software or hardware projects) how to use the results of the project. The student is examined on the thesis or project by a committee consisting of three faculty members.