My university also started off the CS programme with Scheme in the mid 90's when I went, and it was a great leveller. Maybe half the kids had been programming a lot before starting uni, and the other half hadn't, and by starting with Scheme, everyone was at the same level, which built a lot of confidence among the ones that hadn't been programming before.

Five years later or so, the great teacher that ran the CS intro course quit, someone else took over, and switched to Java. Typical. :-/