What is computer science other than this? I'm sorry but every foray into the computer science department for me was basically learning how to program.It's one thing to do it when learning data structures. It's another thing completely when learning an introduction to computer science. There's no reason to use C as an introductory language and algorithms and datastructures are language independent, so C holds no advantage here either.
C does give you a reason to actually implement the data structures though. You might actually learn how they work and use them appropriately in other places, in other languages. Data structures might be language agnostic, but people sure aren't. In C++ for instance the wonder is always "why aren't you using the STL?" Personally I don't think people understand anything until they study it inside and out.