The School of Science and Department of Computer Science at TCNJ are honored to host Dr. Janice E. Cuny for our Spring 2018 Colloquium Series, on Tuesday, March 26, 2019 from 12:30-1:30 pm in the Education Building, room 212. The lecture will be preceded by a lunch reception at 12:00 pm.
Dr. Cuny is a Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She leads the NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate efforts on broadening participation and education in computing.
“Towards a More Diverse and Inclusive Computing Community”
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
12:30–1:30 p.m. (lunch served at 12:00 pm)
Education Building, Room 212
Presentation Overview
All students should have the opportunity to take rigorous computer science (CS) courses that engage and inspire them and are relevant to their lives and interests. Whether future software engineers, scientists, educators, journalists, historians, musicians, or artists, students today must be computationally savvy 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. As educators, we are obligated to show students the potential for computing to transform the world and provide them the opportunity to experience the “passion, beauty, joy and awe of computing.” [Grady Booch, 2007]. As we make changes in computer science education we must also address computing’s longstanding lack of diversity.
This presentation focuses on several efforts by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to integrate research and innovation into preK-20 computer science education and to broaden participation in computing (BPC). The first supports college and university collaborations to re-envision 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.
About the Speaker
Janice E. Cuny, Ph.D., 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 computer science courses (including Exploring Computer Science and AP CS Principles) and laid the foundation for the 2016 launch of President Obama’s Computer Science 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, Jan has received a number of awards including the 2006 President’s Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the 2007 A. Nico Habermann Award from the Computing Research Association (CRA), the 2009 Anita Borg Institute’s Woman of Vision Award for Social Impact, the 2015 NSF Distinguished Service Award, and the 2016 Distinguished Educator Award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE).
For More Information:
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE)
- Janice Cuny, NSF staff page
- TCNJ Department of Computer Science