This Sunday, we graduated our first full class of 15 computer science majors! Thirteen of them are shown below, along with an independent major in “Data Science and Energy Systems”, celebrating after their capstone team presentations at the Whitman Undergraduate Conference. We have a lot to be proud of!
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 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
I am writing this during my return flight from the CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop in Phoenix. Continue reading
At Whitman, we are nearing the end of Week 9 of the fall 2018 semester – my first semester as a working mother. At the start of the semester, I shared some thoughts on returning to teaching, which included commitments to leave work at 5 pm, stop overproducing, and prioritize food. How am I doing? Continue reading
Yesterday I taught all three of my courses for this semester. My first thought is that I haven’t forgotten how. Read on for more.
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
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!
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
Pre-registration for Fall 2018 concluded a week ago. Our enrollments are strong once again, with all courses nearly filling or overfilling.
| Number | Title | Enrolled | Women:Men | Waitlist |
| CS 167-A,B | Intro. Computational Problem Solving | 42/60 | 1:1 | 5 |
| CS/Math 220 | Discrete Math & Functional Programming | 34/24 | 1:2.5 | |
| CS 267 | Human-Computer Interaction | 23/20 | 1:3 | 25 |
| CS 270 | Data Structures | 19/24 | 1:3 | 3 |
| CS 310 | Computer Systems Programming | 18/20 | 1:5 | |
| CS 320 | Theory of Computation | 19/20 | ** | |
| CS/Math 350 | Mathematical Modeling & Numerical Methods | 0 enrolled as a CS course | ||
| CS 495 | Capstone Project | 16/16 | 1:7 | |
Counting From Zero 