This is the first summer in three years that I haven’t had to move offices. Nonetheless, this summer has its own disruptive events that have made planning difficult. Continue reading
Three summers of moving
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On systems and breakdowns
David Allen’s Getting Things Done is no small part of what got me through my dissertation, and I’ve been using it ever since. I was introduced to the system and philosophy by the postdoc I shared my office with. (A.J. Brush, who has continued to get things done—if you are reading this, thanks again!)
However, I won’t say I apply it perfectly. I experience breakdowns pretty regularly, which means reflecting on my tools or routines to figure out what to change to make it work again. Continue reading
Visiting speakers
I was so busy this spring that I didn’t blog on our three wonderful visiting speakers! I did not post about them in the CS @ Whitman group on Facebook either—an oversight I will rectify in the future. In the meantime, here’s a brief summary of those three visits, with thanks to those who made them possible, and a glimpse at what may come in the fall.
Pre-registration for Fall 2017
In what has become a tradition, I report on pre-registration for next semester. The highlights:
- Major declarations are off to a strong start.
- With the exception of Data Structures, our classes filled.
- Two courses have long waiting lists, and one of them needs a response.
Post-SIGCSE reflections
It’s been a while since I blogged. Since I was in Seattle for SIGCSE 2017 and it’s the start of Spring Break, I decided to hang out here for a few extra days. It seems like a good time for a reflection on both SIGCSE and the first half of the spring semester. Continue reading
End-of-year reflections, 2016
With the busy-ness of the semester over and the turning of another year, it is a time for looking back and looking forward.
Last week my Grinnell colleague Sam Rebelsky shared some end-of-semester reflections. I’m going to try this exercise too. Continue reading
We have a major!
This was a big week for Computer Science at Whitman:
- On Saturday, I learned that Personnel Committee is recommending me for tenure.
- Yesterday, the faculty voted to approve the creation of a new Computer Science major.
Report: Grinnell CS Reunion
Before there was any inkling that I would leave Grinnell, SamR and I hatched a plan for Grinnell’s first computer science affinity reunion. We decided on Fall 2016, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the CS major, the 10th anniversary of the CS department (which happened to coincide with my arrival at Grinnell in 2006), and department founder Henry Walker‘s transition to senior faculty status. Continue reading
Pre-registration for Spring 2017
In what has become a tradition, I report on pre-registration for next semester. The highlights:
- Enrollments blew up at the 200-level.
- Enrollments in CS 167 and two out of three 300-level courses are strong but not overwhelming.
- Enrollments in Algorithms are underwhelming, but we’re not worried about it.
Scholarship guidelines
In academia, at least, it’s a rare privilege to write the criteria by which your work will be evaluated. That was, in fact, one of my major tasks for the 2015-16 academic year, and part of my backlog of blog topics. Why is it on my mind right now? While I am being reviewed for tenure at Whitman, I also just submitted my first letter as an external reviewer for a tenure case at another institution. That other institution’s departmental evaluation guidelines look quite different from the ones I wrote for Whitman, and that got me thinking back on the process of developing guidelines.
I tell the story of Whitman’s CS Scholarship Guidelines below. Continue reading
