Associate professor Tucker Balch advises student Victoria Vasquez on programming her mobile robot.

Georgia Tech is gaining national recognition as a university that is coming to the rescue of computer science.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, as enrollment numbers in college computer science departments — especially among women — continue to dwindle, "professors are contemplating ever-more-elaborate strategies to keep the United States from slipping further in the international engineering sweepstakes." One particular strategy is to revamp and rebrand computer science programs to broaden its appeal.

More than a dozen universities have created "media computation" programs, which hope to introduce students to computer science through digital art and Web design, not traditional programming, according to the Associated Press.

Georgia Tech is among the institutions that are shifting away from computer science and choosing to focus on more specific fields, like bioengineering and robotics, the Chronicle said. Robotics students at Georgia Tech "spent the semester teaching robots to draw shapes, to chirp on command and to navigate obstacle courses," the publication noted.

Tucker Balch, an associate professor at Georgia Tech, told the AP that the course is an attempt to combat "prime number" syndrome. That disease, he said, afflicts computer science departments that typically ask newcomers to write dull programs performing mathematical algorithms.

Tech's approach, the Chronicle said, "may also save computer science in America."