CPSC 552 201, Fall 2025 Syllabus

General Information

Instructor:

Dr. Dylan Schwesinger

Office:

Old Main 250; Phone: (484) 646 - 4389

email:

schwesin@kutztown.edu

Web URL:

https://csitrd.kutztown.edu/~schwesin

Office hours:

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday 10:00am – 11:00am
Monday 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Meeting Time & Place:\

Mo 6:00pm – 8:50pm, OM 158

Course Description:

This course studies the concepts dealing with UNIX system programming. A lot of emphasis will be placed on working with processes and interprocess communication (IPC). Details of various aspects of IPC will be explored and implemented, including pipes, semaphores, sockets, message queues and shared memory.

Prerequisite: Unconditional acceptance to the graduate program or permission of the instructor.

Course Objectives

• Define basic terminology used in UNIX Interprocess Communication (IPC).

• Write programs using UNIX sockets.

• Write programs utilizing various IPC techniques, such as message passing, semaphores, and shared memory.

• Demonstrate synchronization in UNIX programming.

• Write programs using multiple processes and IPC facilities, such as pipes.

Course Organization

Your participation in the course will involve the following activities:

• Attending the lectures
• Doing assignments

Regular attendance and class participation are expected. Students are responsible for all material covered in class.

Policies

Assignments

All assignments are due by the specified day and time. Late assignments will not be accepted. All assignments must include the following information: your name, the course (CPSC 552), semester, year, and assignment number. Programming assignments must follow the Computer Science Documentation Standards. Failure to meet these expectations will result in a 10% penalty for that assignment.

Final Grade Assignment

Each student will receive a numeric score for the course based on a weighted average of the following:

• Assignments (90%): There will be several assignments which combined will count for 90% of the course grade. Assignments may have different weights based on the perception of the relative effort required.

• Participation (10%): Participation demonstrates your commitment to actively managing your own learning. This commitment can be demonstrated in many ways, for example:

  • Asking appropriate questions in class
  • Making appropriate comments in class
  • Answering questions when called on in class

The letter grade cutoff points are 93 (A), 90 (A-), 87 (B+), 83 (B), 80 (B-), 77 (C+), 70 (C).

Bonus Points: The instructor will selectively consider raising individual grades for students just below the cutoffs based on factors such as attendance, class participation, improvement throughout the course, and special circumstances.

Academic Dishonesty

All students should familiarize themselves with the Computer Science Academic Integrity Policy

Assignments will be closely monitored for plagiarism. All infractions will be reported to the department chair. The penalty for cheating will be determined on a case-by-case basis, but it will always be worse than having not turned in the assignment.

Email Correspondence

The preferred method of course communication is email. When sending email, please indicate the course number in the subject line by placing it within square brackets, for example, “[CPSC 552] Need help on Assignment 1”. All email correspondence must sent from your Kutztown University email address. You can expect a response to an email with a properly formatted subject line within 24 hours. An email with an improperly formatted subject line may get no response at all.

Classroom Etiquette

Consideration for your classmates, instructor, and class is expected. Please come to class on time and prepared to learn. There should be no classroom conversations, sleeping, cell phone usage, or other disruptions to the class.

Instructor Assistance

If a student solicits assistance from the instructor and behaves in a disrespectful manner, the instructor reserves the right to refuse assistance until the student can behave in a respectful manner.

Accreditation

Any course work submitted to the instructor (including but not limited to assignments, tests, and projects) may be photocopied and retained for the purpose of assessment, accreditation and quality improvement, after removal of any information identifying the student.

Kutztown University Class Handout Information

Supplemental information from university offices for class handouts and syllabi is located here: Class Handout Information

Note: This syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.