Department of Computer Science

Welcome to the Department of Computer Science at Grinnell College. This site contains information primarily of interest to current students and faculty. Prospective students may find additional useful information in the CS sections of the Grinnell College website and the College Catalog.

The CS Department maintains a mailing list for current students. We routinely send announcements for department social and academic events to this list, as well as occasional job postings, reminders about upcoming deadlines, and other information likely of interest to students who are currently taking CS courses. To join the mailing list please complete the CS Students Membership Form (Grinnell login required).

News and Events

• CS Table: Upgrade Holdouts and Going Analog

  Tuesday, October 27, 2026, 12–1pm in JRC 224C

  We’ll resume CS Table next week with a discussion of consumer technology and the deliberate choices some users make to not upgrade, or to seek out older technology. To prepare for our discussion, please read this pair of Atlantic articles (gift links sent via email):

  • Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly. The Upgrade Holdouts. October 5, 2026. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/10/meet-the-upgrade-holdouts/688874/

  • Nancy Walecki. The Newest Way to Go Analog. July 9, 2026. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/07/new-analog/687856/

  
  The second article focuses specifically on how young people are thinking about technology. As you read and prepare for our discussion, also think about the choices you make about technology that you use, whether you’ve sought out older devices or not.

  Join us at noon in JRC 224C (upstairs inside the dining hall) for our weekly discussion of computing and its impact on society. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend.

• CS Table: CS and Songs

  Tuesday, October 13, 2026, 12–1pm in CS Commons

  At our next CS table we will discuss the applications of Computer Science methodology to other fields. Specifically, we will read an old paper (almost 50 years now) from Knuth and then discuss further applications.

  • Donald Knuth. The complexity of songs. July, 1977. ACM SIGACT News. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1008354.1008355

  
  Join us at noon in the CS Commons for our weekly discussion of computing and its impact on society. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend.

• CS Table: Google Zero

  Tuesday, October 6, 2026, 12–1pm in CS Commons

  At our next CS table we will discuss the phenomenon Nilay Patel at The Verge calls Google Zero: when changes to Google Search mean that users make fewer and fewer visits to actual websites, instead relying on AI output or extracted text from Google’s web crawl. We’ll also talk about Google’s recent effort to manage this issue by paying sites for the content they scrape. To prepare for our discussion, please read the two articles linked below:

  • Kate Conger. Google Is Building an A.I. Fence Around the Internet It Once Championed. The New York Times. July 20, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open-web.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zVA.L7zf._L5VDoBJCS4f
  • Ryan Whitwam. Google’s early attempt to pay websites for AI answers is struggling. Ars Technica. September 30, 2026. https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/09/google-is-paying-100-websites-for-contributions-to-ai-overviews-but-the-amounts-are-tiny/

  
  If you are interested, you can read an account of what this looks like for a small business at https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/.

  Join us at noon in the CS Commons for our weekly discussion of computing and its impact on society. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend.

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You can find older news items in the news archive.