National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Officer Jan Cuny Talk – Monday 5/13
Towards a more Inclusive and Diverse Computing Community
Dr. Jan Cuny, National Science Foundation (NSF)
Monday, May 13th, 3:30pm
Cohen Memorial Hall, 203
https://events.vanderbilt.edu/index.php?eID=128400
All students should have the opportunity to take rigorous computer science (CS) courses that are relevant to their lives and their interests, courses that engage and inspire them. Whether they are to become software engineers, scientists or educators, architects or engineers, journalists or historians, musicians or artists, today’s students will need to be computationally savvy. They will need 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. Further, it is essential that we as educators show the potential for computing to transform the world, that we will give our students the opportunity to experience the “passion, beauty, joy and awe of computing.” [Grady Booch, 2007]. And finally, as we make changes in CS education, it is incumbent on us to also address computing’s longstanding lack of diversity.
This talk briefly looks at efforts supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that integrate research and innovation on preK-20 CS education and broadening participation in computing (BPC). It also covers two new efforts. The first, supports collaborations of colleges and universities as they begin the process of re-envisioning 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.
The talk will take place from 3:30-4:30pm, followed by an opportunity to network and meet Dr. Cuny.
Jan Cuny 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 CS courses (including Exploring Computer Science and AP CS Principles) and laid the foundation for the 2016 launch of President Obama’s CS 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 ACM President’s Award, the 2007 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award, the 2009 Anita Borg Institute’s Woman of Vision Award for Social Impact, the 2015 NSF Distinguished Service Award, and the 2016 SIGCSE Distinguished Educator Award, and the 2017 ACM Distinguished Service Award.