Data Structures

Course Description¶

• Course number: COMSC 205

• Semester: Spring 2026

Welcome! Data are everywhere, from the contents of your Instagram feed, to your Google Calendar, to your medical records and much, much more. Organizing data so that they can be used and updated efficiently is key to programming and building software systems. In this course, we will introduce fundamental data structures used to organize data in memory and define more precisely what we mean by efficiency. We will also introduce the Java programming language, which you will use to get hands-on experience working with data structures.

When and Where¶

• Lecture

  • Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:30am - 11:45am

  • Location: Clapp 306

• Labs

  • Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 1:30pm - 4:20pm

  • Location: Kendade 307

Teaching Staff¶

• Instructor: Tony Liu (he/him)

  • Office: Clapp 207

• Lab Instructor: Sage Mahannah (he/they)

  • Office: Kendade G05

• Teaching Assistants:

  • Cristina Lopez Mendoza, she/her

  • Diana Eastman, they/them

  • Tram Nguyen, she/her

  • Idranne Mbah Ndum, she/her

  • Catherine Liang, she/her

• OpenDSA, which is open sourced under the MIT License.

• java4python by Brad Miller, which is released under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

• Java, Java, Java by Ralph Morelli, Ralph Walde, and Beryl Hoffman, which is released under the CC-BY 4.0 license.