People of ACM: Mehran Sahami, Co-Chair of ACM Ed Board

Nice (short) interview with Mehran Sahami — addresses several issues around computing education and about Stanford’s CS department.

How did you convince Mark Zuckerberg to come to your class every year for the last four years to lead a Q&A with students?

The last assignment I usually give in my introductory programming class is called “FacePamphlet,” as it’s supposed to be a very simple version of Facebook. I thought it would be great if Mike Schroepfer, the CTO at Facebook and a long-time friend and Stanford alum, would talk to my class about Facebook and, more broadly, the ways in which computer science can have an impact in the world.

When I first invited him to come a few years ago, he responded by asking if I’d like him to bring Mark Zuckerberg to the class too. I was thrilled at the possibility. As you can imagine, their visit to the class was a huge hit, and they spent the whole hour engaged with the students, answering a broad range of questions. They have been so kind as to continue that tradition, visiting the course to do Q&A with the students for four years in a row—their last visit drew over 700 students.

Both Mark and Mike are very committed to promoting computer science education, and I feel fortunate that coming to my class is one of the many ways they have encouraged students to pursue computer science. Interestingly enough, my young kids learned some of the basics of programming from Mark through the videos he did for code.org. I think he was a bit surprised at first when I thanked him for helping teach my kids to code on one of his more recent visits to my class.

via January 13, 2015: People of ACM: Mehran Sahami — Association for Computing Machinery.