Università della Svizzera italiana
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Università della Svizzera italiana (University of Italian-speaking Switzerland, University of Lugano) is a Swiss university, in the city of Lugano, in Ticino. The primary language of instruction is Italian. It was founded in 1996. As a European university, the undergraduate programs last 3 years; a further two years is required for a Master's degree.
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[edit] Faculties
USI has four faculties, three of which are located on the main campus, namely, Economics, Communications/Communication Science, and Informatics/Computer Science. There is also a faculty of Architecture, located in the nearby town of Mendrisio. The campus is also shared with a theology department, which is not affiliated with the university.
[edit] The department of Economics
[edit] The department of Communications
[edit] The department of Informatics
Founded in 2004, it offers the only undergraduate program at USI with English as the language of instruction. It has a highly competent, international staff, and a rigorous curriculum, still being shaped. The dean is currently Mehdi Jazayeri, a senior member of the IEEE and author of several books.
First year students cover mathematical topics, computer architecture, networking, and fundamental concepts of programming. A further course persists throughout the 3 year undergraduate curriculum. Called the Atelier, it has the purpose of bringing the courses together and to provide exposure to real world tools that are useful to computer scientists, including Unix, LaTeX, HTML/CSS, CVS.
Students are expected to learn about a wide variety of topics, from big-O notation and calculus, through networking protocols and layers, to computer architecture. A variety of programming languages are used. Programming is introduced through Scheme and functional programming throughout the first semester, in parallel with the computer architecture course (which uses MIPS assembly). Smalltalk is used to teach the basics of object oriented programming; later on, C and mostly Java are used. The curriculum puts a strong emphasis on teamwork, with a major group project happening at the end of every semester.
