Here are those four big lessons (with more detail in the post):

• It’s easier to have something in place and then improve it, than to convince others that computing should be squeezed in.  
• Industry voices matter.
• Public policy support goes a long way.
• Economics isn’t the only argument.

He said that the Office of Management and Budget has really been driving the effort to consolidate STEM education funding programs.  OMB was unhappy that Biology, Engineering, and CISE all had their own STEM education programs.  However, CISE got to keep their education research program (as the new STEM-C program) because it was already a collaboration with the education division in NSF (EHR).  All the rest (including TUES) is being collapsed into the new EHR programs.

In his talk, he made an explicit argument which I’ve heard Jan Cuny make, but hadn’t heard an NSF AD make previously:

1. We have a dramatic underproduction of computing degrees, around 40K per year.
2. We have a dramatic under-representation of certain demographic groups (e.g., women, African-Americans, Hispanics), and we can’t solve #1 without solving that under-representation.  He says that the basic arithmetic won’t work.  We can’t get enough graduates unless we broaden participation in computing.
3. We have a lack of presence in primary and secondary school in the United States (K-12).  He claims that we can’t solve #2 without fixing #3.  We have to have a presence so that women and under-represented minority groups will discover computing and pursue degrees (and careers) in it.

The ICER 2013 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests in a workshop under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their dissertation work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have a clear topic and research approach, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes. However, we welcome submissions from students at any stage of their doctoral studies. In addition to stating how you will gain from participation, both you and your advisor should be clear on what you can contribute to the Doctoral Consortium.

Allison Elliott Tew, University of Washington Tacoma

Jonas Boustedt, University of Gävle

icerdc2013@gmail.com

What is the Doctoral Consortium?

The Consortium has the following objectives:

• Provide a supportive setting for feedback on students’ current research and guidance on future research directions
• Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution
• Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research
• Support a new generation of researchers with information and advice on research and academic career paths

via Doctoral Consortium | ICER Conference.

Faculty in the College of Computing have been asked not to talk about the online MS degree (which seems weird to me — asking faculty not to talk about their own degree programs).  Please understand if I don’t answer questions in response to this announcement.

Starting in the fall, the Georgia Institute of Technology, together with AT&T and Udacity, an online education venture, will offer a master’s degree in computer science that can be earned entirely through so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs. While the courses would be available free online to the general public, students seeking the degree would have to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and pay tuition that is expected to be less than $7,000.

via Georgia Tech Will Offer a Master’s Degree Online – NYTimes.com.

Part of this is easy to explain: The United States is big. Very big. And it’s a far bigger country than the other members of the OECD. We claim roughly 27 percent of the group’s 15-to-19-year-olds. Japan, in contrast, has a smidge over 7 percent. So in reading and in science, we punch above our weight by just a little, while in math we punch below.

But the point remains: In two out of three subjects, Americans are over-represented among the best students.

If we have so many of the best minds, why are our average scores so disappointingly average? As Rutgers’s Hal Salzman and Georgetown’s B. Lindsay Lowell, who co-authored the EPI report, noted in a 2008 Nature article, our high scorers are balanced out by an very large number of low scorers. Our education system, just like our economy, is polarized.

via You’ll Be Shocked by How Many of the World’s Top Students Are American – Jordan Weissmann – The Atlantic.

Girls in IT: The Facts, sponsored by NCWIT’s K-12 Alliance, is a synthesis of the existing literature on increasing girls’ participation in computing. It aims to bring together this latest research so that readers can gain a clearer and more coherent picture of 1) the current state of affairs for girls in computing, 2) the key barriers to increasing girls’ participation in these fields, and 3) promising practices for addressing these barriers.

via Girls in IT: The Facts | National Center for Women & Information Technology.

The Minerva Project, a San Francisco venture with lofty but untested plans to redefine higher education, said on Monday that starting next year it would award an annual $500,000 prize to a faculty member at any institution in the world who has demonstrated extraordinary, innovative teaching.

via Minerva Project Announces Annual $500,000 Prize for Professors – NYTimes.com.

The students use EarSketch, the software created by Magerko and Jason Freeman, an associate professor in Tech’s School of Music. EarSketch utilizes the Python programming language and Reaper, a digital audio work station program similar to those used in recording studios throughout the music industry.

“Young people don’t always realize that computer science and programming can be fun,” Freeman said. “This is allowing students to express their own creative musical ideas as they learn computer science principles.”

via Gwinnett pilot hopes to draw students to computer programming… | www.myajc.com.

Barbara Ericson and I gave the Castle Lecture at West Point in April.  The Castle Lecture is a big deal — we spoke before the entire first-year class at West Point.  (Last year’s lecture was David Ferrucci, PI of the IBM Watson project.)  We received this honor because West Point requires Computer Science of everyone, and this is the first year that they all the first years used our Media Computation Python textbook in that class.  So, we got a chance to lecture to 1200 future Army officers and their instructors who all knew Media Computation.  It was a stunning experience.

The whole day was amazing.  If you’ve never been to West Point, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity.  The campus is beautiful.  The traditions and stories about the place are amazing.  There’s such a sense of history, such a buzz about the place.  We ate lunch with a group of cadets (in an absolutely enormous mess hall where thousands of students eat lunch in 20 minutes) and were deeply impressed. These are undergraduate students who are making a huge commitment to service to their country.

The biggest intellectual treat for me was learning more about their course, IT 105.  700 students every semester take the course — in groups of 20.  16 instructors are involved in teaching the course.  We met with the instructors who teach just about nothing but IT 105, but also met some of the other West Point EECS instructors who teach a section or two of IT 105 along with their other courses.  (Like Dr. Tanya Tolles Markow, a GT alumna, who teaches IT 105 and database classes.)

The person who makes this all work is Susan K. Schwartz (CAPT, USN, Ret).  Her attention to detail is phenomenal.  Susan is going to give me her errata for the third edition when she finishes this semester, which is more detailed than all the corrections that all instructors have sent me for both of the previous editions combined.  Susan creates detailed lecture notes and assignments that drive all the sections for every day across the entire semester.  All the students who take the course take the same exams, so Susan provides enough detail so that all the instructors know what to do in each class so that all students get to the finish line.

Barb and I each got to sit in one section.  This is the opposite of a MOOC.  The teacher knows every student.  She (I attended one of Susan’s classes) calls on individual students, prods students to engage, and gives them activities in class.  It’s small, interactive, and individualized.  Yet, there are 700 students taking it at once.  It’s an enormous effort to make that large of a class work such that students can all have that small class experience. We’re going to try to get Susan’s materials available to other Media Computation teachers.

The lecture was fun and exciting to do. We talked about how media was going to influence them for the rest of their lives.  I gave a brief audio lecture, then we talked about computers that can process all that we can hear and see, and have the processing power of ten year’s forward.  What does that mean for the rest of their lives?  Barb gave a great overview of advances in robotics and cyber-security and even prosthetics. Afterward at the reception, we each had 9-12 cadets asking us follow-up questions for about an hour.  We got back to the Thayer Hotel (what a place!) just buzzing from the amazing adventure of the day.

Today, Washington Governor Jay Inslee is signing a bill that will allow high schools across the state to count the Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science course as a math or science credit, making Washington one of only 10 states that counts computer science towards high school graduation.

Before today, AP Computer Science counted as an elective—making it a tough choice for students looking to pack their transcripts with math and science courses and those that might be curious about computer science. Currently, only 35 of the state’s 622 high schools offer AP Computer Science. The hope is that this change will encourage more students to take the course and many more schools to offer it.

via Way to Go, Washington State, Making It Count!.