Aspnes acknowledged that the introduction of CS50 into the department could draw students away from its other preparatory courses, like Computer Science 112: “Introduction to Programming,” but he said the department will still offer these courses.  

Aspnes added that the department has been trying of late to expand its introductory computer science courses to no avail due to limited resources.

“My understanding is that...Harvard’s CS50 has substantially more resources than we do at Yale,” Aspnes said, noting that he believes the department will receive extra resources from Yale to launch its version of CS50.

Feigenbaum said she is hopeful that the proposal will pass and enrich both campuses, adding that the proposed course could possibly culminate in a Harvard versus Yale hackathon at the end of next fall.

“If Harvard and Yale do it in this joint way…we can build into a combination of online instruction and person-to-person on-campus instruction, and a little bit of friendly rivalry and tradition,” she said.

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at meg.bernhard@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Meg_Bernhard.