On Tuesday, March 26, the School of Science and Computer Science Department will host Dr. Janice E. Cuny, Program Director for Computing Education, Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Cuny will give a talk entitled “Towards a More Diverse and Inclusive Computing Community”. An abstract of the talk can be found below.
Please join faculty and students in Education Building 212 from 12:30 – 1:30 PM for this talk.
Lunch reception will follow.
Abstract:
All students should have the opportunity to take rigorous computer science (CS) courses that are relevant to their lives and their interests, courses that engage and inspire them. Whether they are to become software engineers, scientists or educators, architects or engineers, journalists or historians, musicians or artists, today’s students will need to be computationally savvy. They will need to understand the fundamental concepts of computation and their application to problem solving, the basics of cybersecurity, and the social and ethical implications of computing. Further, it is essential that we as educators show the potential for computing to transform the world, that we will give our students the opportunity to experience the “passion, beauty, joy and awe of computing.” [Grady Booch, 2007]. And finally, as we make changes in CS education, it is incumbent on us to also address computing’s longstanding lack of diversity. This talk briefly looks at efforts by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that integrate research and innovation on preK-20 CS education and broadening participation in computing (BPC). It also covers two new efforts. The first supports collaborations of colleges and universities as they begin the process of re-envisioning computing in undergraduate education in light of its increasingly ubiquitous role in interdisciplinary work. The second is a requirement currently piloted in NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE) that aims to dramatically increase engagement in BPC activities throughout the computing community.
Bio:
Dr. Janice E. Cuny, is a program officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF) where she leads the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE)’s efforts on broadening participation and education in computing. Her work led to the establishment of the national BPC-A Alliances that together address underrepresentation in computing from elementary school through the research and professional levels. She spearheaded NSF’s efforts to get inclusive, rigorous, academic computing courses into U.S. schools, leading to the development and scaling of several new and exciting high school CS courses (including Exploring Computer Science and AP CS Principles) and laid the foundation for the 2016 launch of President Obama’s CS for All Initiative. More recently, she leads efforts to re-envision the role of computing in undergraduate education and to engage a large proportion of the community in efforts to improve diversity in computing.
For her efforts with underserved populations, Dr. Cuny has received a number of awards including the 2006 ACM President’s Award, the 2007 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award, the 2009 Anita Borg Institute’s Woman of Vision Award for Social Impact, the 2015 NSF Distinguished Service Award, and the 2016 SIGCSE Distinguished Educator Award.
CS Majors Emily Kazenmayer (Class of 2019) and Madeline Febinger (Class of 2020) were recently accepted into Phi Beta Kappa honors society.
Students in sections of Dr. Pulimood’s CSC 415: Software Engineering class have collaborated with Mercer Street Friends, a community food bank based in Trenton, to upgrade their information systems as part of a semester-long software engineering project.