Author Archives: Janet Davis

Unknown's avatar

About Janet Davis

Liberal arts CS professor, semi-retired to a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge.

Pre-registration for Fall 2019

Leave a reply

With busy office hours for CS 210, my husband’s travel for work, child care disruptions, and ping-ponging viruses among the members of the family, I found no time in April for my traditional post on the next semester’s pre-registration. Summer is catch-up time. So with no further ado, here’s the summary table:

Number Title Enrolled Women:Men Waitlist
CS 167-A,B Intro. Computational Problem Solving 33/60 1:1
CS/Math 220 Discrete Math & Functional Programming 27/24 1:3.5
CS 270 Data Structures 17/24 1:5
CS 310 Computer Systems Programming 25/20 1:2 2
CS 320 Theory of Computation 21/20 1:2.5 1
CS 357 Natural Language Processing 26/16 2:3 16
CS 495 Capstone Project 19/16 1:2

Continue reading →

Senior assessment

1 Reply

A distinctive component of Whitman’s curriculum is the senior assessment in the major. Indeed, Whitman claims to be “the first college or university in the nation to require undergraduate students to complete comprehensive examinations in their major fields.”

In this post I address the design of the senior assessment in computer science and reflect briefly on my first experience with that assessment. Continue reading →

Pre-registration for Spring 2019

Leave a reply

Pre-registration for spring 2019 courses concluded earlier this week. This time around, we faced a real crisis: CS 210, Computer Systems Fundamentals, closed with the end of pre-registration for the junior class, leaving a waitlist of 23 second-years and 2 first-year students. CS 210 is supposed to be a second-year class, open also to first-year students with advanced placement. Continue reading →

Maternity leave

Leave a reply

I write as my maternity leave is drawing to a close. My child will start with a full-time nanny during the first full week of August, so that I have time to prepare for the start of classes in the last week of August. I am writing this while traveling to and from my first professional meeting since the birth of my child – and also the first time I’ve been apart from my child for more than a few hours. Continue reading →

Planning for faculty leaves

Leave a reply

After just three semesters with the CS faculty at full strength, I was on maternity leave this spring, and one of us will be on sabbatical each of the next six semesters. You may wonder how we are managing these leaves as a department.

First and foremost, I am pleased to announce that Rohan Loveland will be joining us as a visiting assistant professor for the 2018-19 academic year. Dr. Loveland earned his Ph.D. in Engineering at Oxford University. He comes to us from Los Alamos National Labs and Dynafit via an adjunct professorship at New Mexico State University. He looks forward to teaching a course on Machine Learning at Whitman in spring 2019.

More of the story below!

Continue reading →

The Pledge of the Computing Professional

Leave a reply

Last Wednesday we celebrated the third annual Pledge of the Computing Professional at Whitman College, with our first two computer science majors, three computer science minors, and an independent major.

The Pledge is a rite-of-passage ceremony for computer science students and others who intend a career in computing. Inspired by the Order of the Engineer, a pin and a certificate serve to remind alumni of their moral and ethical responsibility as a skilled professional.
Continue reading →