Siena's CSforAll program supports in-service and pre-service teachers in qualifying for NYS teacher certification in computer science.
For in-service teachers: With support from an NSF CSforAll:RPP grant and from Siena College, teachers collaborating with our CSforAll program can take Siena CS courses for free. In NYS, teachers need 12 credits of computer science to qualify for a supplementary certificate in CS through the individual evaluation pathway. To assist with this, each semester we offer Siena CS courses in the last afternoon (with remote learning options) which teachers can take tuition free. NYSED provides examples here of the types of courses that can be used towards the 12 credits.
NYSED uses Student Information Repository System (SIRS) codes for high school courses, categorized by subject area and course type. This is the list of NYSED CS course ids. From these, we selected below some encodings we recommend using for the Siena supported CS courses:
Discovering CS:
SIRS 10008 Particular Topic Computer Literacy
SIRS 10160 Particular Topic Computer Programming
SIRS 10199 Computer Programming - Other Other computing courses.
CSIS110 Introduction to CS with Python and Multimedia
SIRS 10152 Computer Programming
SIRS 10156 Comp Prog-Other Language
CSIS180 Web Design
SIRS 10201 (Web Design)
CSIS120 Introduction to Software Development
SIRS 10155 (Java Programming)
Currently none of these codings require a SOCE or CS certification to teach and all of them qualify teachers for a SOCE (see SOCE web page for list of qualifying courses).
NYSED recently gave a webinar recorded here about CS Certification and the SOCE.
Note - for teachers that are not certified in CS and do not qualify for a SOCE there are still options for teaching CS. First, teachers certified in an area that is not CS may teach 1 course outside of your certification area. See this link for more information. And second, if the CS courses you would like to teach are NOT on the list in this document, you can teach the courses without the NYSED CS Teaching Certification. You can find the codes we recommend for our 4 Siena HS/Dual Enrollment courses above. If your district uses the codes we recommend, currently, you do NOT need to hold a NYSED CS Teaching Certificate to teach these courses. However, this is likely to change in the future, so it is a good idea to work towards certification.
For pre-service teachers: Siena College was the first college or university in New York State to have an approved initial teacher certification program in computer science. To qualify for this certification, students in this program major in computer science and take education courses. See the Times Union newspaper article here!
For more information on either of these pathways to certification, please contact Robin Flatland (flatland@siena.edu) or Jim Matthews (matthews@siena.edu).
Last updated August 2025