Abstract
Hardware courses have always been a part of the undergraduate Computer Science (CS) curriculum at small colleges. However, these courses are often viewed by many faculty members either as a necessity to satisfy accreditation requirements or, at best, as a traditional but useless part of the CS program in liberal arts settings. The material in these courses is often considered self-contained, and the relationship with other courses in the CS curriculum is rarely emphasized. In this paper we take a closer look at the place and relevance of hardware courses in the CS curriculum of small colleges.