Events

We organize and sponsor a number of events throughout the year to promote computer science education. Please contact Heather Carney with questions, comments or suggestions.

A complete schedule for the ongoing Colloquium on Computer Science Pedagogy, can be found at: http://www.intro.cs.cmu.edu/events/colloquium.html.

Current events

Recent events

  2008-09-30   Colloquium on CS Pedagogy, Manuel Blum
  2008-11-11   Colloquium on CS Pedagogy, Candace Thille
  2009-02-26   Colloquium on CS Pedagogy, Matt Jadud

Colloquium on CS Pedagogy

Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 3:00 pm, NSH 3305

Luis von Ahn is an Assistant Professor and winner of the "Herbert A. Simon Award for Excellence in Teaching", Carnegie Mellon University.

Abstract: I'll discuss some of the dirty tricks methods we use in teaching 15-251.

15-251 is a course that will take a philosophical and historical perspective on the development of theoretical computer science. From using a pile of stones to represent and manipulate numbers, humans have progressively developed an abstract vocabulary with which to mathematically represent their world. The ancients, especially the Greeks, realized that they could consistently reason about their representations in a step-by-step manner. In other words, by computing in abstract models, they could describe and predict patterns in the world around them.

Starting with ancient algorithms for arithmetic, we will revisit the development of mathematics from a computational point of view. Conversely, we will mathematically study the nature of computation itself. What is computation? What is computable, in principle? What is especially easy, or especially hard to compute? To what extent does the inherent nature of computation shape how we learn and think about the world?

Colloquium on CS Pedagogy

Thursday, April 23, 2009, 3:00 pm, NSH 3305

Dr. David Klappholz is an associate professor of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology, where his specialty is software engineering. Dr. Klappholz spent a Fall 2002 sabbatical with Barry Boehm at USC and has worked with Prof. Boehm, a major partner in the initiative, every summer since then. In addition to his interest in empirical software engineering research, Prof. Klappholz works, under NSF funding, with an educational psychologist on issues relating to engineering education pedagogy. He is also a member of a Stevens-based,DoD-supported, team that is crafting a reference standard M.S. curriculum in software engineering, a curriculum with a heavy systems engineering slant. In a previous incarnation Prof. Klappholz did research, supported by NSF, IBM Research, DoE, and others, on parallel machine architecture, automatic code parallelization, compiler optimizations, and, in his professional infancy, on natural language understanding and translation.

Colloquium on CS Pedagogy

Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 2:30 pm, NSH 1507

Stella X. Yu got her ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied robotics at the Robotics Institute and vision science at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. She continued her computer vision research as a postdoc at the UC Berkeley's Department of Computer Sicnece. Since she joined Boston College, Dr. Yu has been developing an interdisciplinary curriculum and research agenda around art and visual perception. She received the NSF CAREER award in 2007 on the topic of Art and Vision: Scene Layout from Pictorial Cues.

Colloquium on CS Pedagogy

Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 3:00 pm, NSH 3305

Manuel Blum, Bruce Nelson Professor of Computer Science and Carnegie Mellon University Professor, will present at a special Colloquium on Computer Science Pedagogy lecture.

Colloquium on CS Pedagogy

Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 4:00 pm, NSH 3305

Candace Thille, Director of the Open Learning Initiative, will present "Using Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Other Technologies to Foster Learning" at a special Colloquium on Computer Science Pedagogy lecture.

Professor Thille's talk will discuss the Open Learning Initiative's use of intelligent tutoring systems, virtual laboratories, simulations, and frequent assessment and feedback opportunities to create and evaluate a collection of web-based learning environments to deliver the type of dynamic instruction that fosters learning.

Colloquium on CS Pedagogy

Thursday, February 26, 2009, 3:00 pm, NSH 3305

Matt Jadud is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Allegheny College, a liberal arts institution of 2100 students in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, his M.S. in Computer Science from Indiana University Bloomington, and his B.A. in Physics from Kenyon College. When not studying novice programmers, Matthew spends his time developing virtual machine and compiler technologies to support parallel-safe languages for robotic control. His plans for the immediate future, however, are quite fluid, as his first child is due in March.