2020 in review

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At Whitman, like at many other institutions of higher education, faculty submit an annual activity report. Why? As with annual reviews in any profession, it’s a prod to reflection and self-evaluation. We don’t work closely with our nominal boss, the Dean of the College, so it serves to inform her of our workload and accomplishments. She uses this information to determine raises for the following academic year. (Not that I expect there will be raises this year—except, I hope, promotion raises for those who are so entitled.)

I’ve never been moved to blog about my annual activity report before. It’s a routine chore. But this activity report, post-sabbatical and mid-pandemic, left me thinking, “Wow, I got a lot done last year!” That’s despite spending 2 1/2 months at home with my toddler, and despite spending much of the fall semester feeling completely feckless. I think my 2020 activity report tells a story about the nature of faculty work and the mood of 2020.

Whitman’s annual faculty activity report begins with “Teaching, Departmental Affairs, and Advising.” We are specifically required to include:

1) Courses taught during the period covered by this activity report as well as their enrollments

2) Number of pre-major and major advisees, as well as a description of the informal advising done for students who are not your formal advisees, during the period covered by this activity report

3) Independent study projects supervised during the period covered by this activity report

4) Number, degree of involvement, and character of Senior Assessments in the Major

And so that is the information I started with.

  • Teaching responsibilities
    Spring 2020: On sabbatical, no courses
    Fall 2020:

    1. CS/Math 220, Discrete Math and Functional Programming, final enrollment 22/24
    2. CS 267, Human-Computer Interaction, final enrollment 21/16
  • Advising responsibilities
    Spring 2020: On sabbatical, no advisees; informally advised a former research assistant.
    Fall 2020: With John’s sabbatical and Andy’s departure, I was the only CS faculty member with official academic advisees. I ended the fall semester with a total of 32 major advisees. Colleagues in Math agreed to advise the remainder (mostly seniors); and I have provided further unofficial career/life advising for a few of them.
  • Independent Studies
    I supervised five independent study projects in 2020.

    1. In Spring 2020, a research study design project with graduating senior [Student 1] (Psychology), which resulted in an approved IRB proposal. (Due to circumstances, I have not yet undertaken the study.)
    2. In Fall 2020,
      • A 3-credit independent study on “Mobile Apps w/ SwiftUI” with sophomore CS major [Student 2]. This resulted in Student 2 publishing their app in the iOS App Store. The department supported them with reimbursement for their Apple Developer Connection membership.
      • A 1-credit independent study on computer security with senior CS major [Student 3] They plan a career in computer security, so the independent study was very important to them.
      • Two 1-credit independent studies in support of internships for international students [Student 4] and [Student 5].
  • Senior assessments
    Due to my sabbatical, I did not participate in 2020 senior assessments in the CS major.

My narrative on teaching and advising was much briefer than usual, as I had already reflected here in my blog:

Teaching in Fall 2020 was a struggle. Because I had been on sabbatical in the spring, I had no experience teaching remotely. Discussions with Albert Schueller, John Stratton, the BBB group, and CS colleagues at other institutions helped a lot – not to mention reading the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed and at least two books. But that did not provide the hands-on experience.

I struggled a lot, but I also learned a lot, particularly from conversations with Sarah Hurlburt as well as my own experiences. I feel much better prepared for remote instruction this spring.

One specific, positive development as a result of my struggles is that I resolved to be much more open with my students in discussing mental health. This blog post touches on that topic: http://blogs.whitman.edu/countingfromzero/2020/12/21/reflections-on-fall-2020/

Part of the struggle was due to my own ambition: With Albert, John, and others, I decided to try an entirely new philosophy of grading: Joe Feldman’s Grading for Equity. It was a worthwhile experiment but a mixed success, as I reflected in my blog: http://blogs.whitman.edu/countingfromzero/2021/01/13/lessons-learned-from-my-first-semester-of-grading-for-equity/

Again, I learned a lot, both from my (sometimes painful) experiences and from conversations with others. Again, I feel much better prepared for this spring, particularly after a conversation with J. Philip East at UNI (one of the pioneers of Grading for Equity in CS, who got me interested on a CS education email list) and through reading posts by my “blog buddy” Amy Csizmar-Dalal at Carleton College.

With so many advisees, I felt like the most important thing I could do was make time for a conversation with each of them. I spent upwards of 8 hours in advising meetings leading up to pre-registration, and spoke with all but one of my advisees for 15-30 minutes. (The one advisee I did not meet with was a senior double major, who met with his other major advisor.) Because internships and summer research experiences are so important to careers in computing, I made a point of asking each advisee where they were in their planning for summer, and encouraged many to visit the Student Engagement Center for guidance and advice.

Where at many institutions a sabbatical report would be a separate document, at Whitman sabbatical reports are included in the annual activity report when relevant. I wrote:

Very little about my year-long sabbatical went according to plan.

  • My summer project with Buyaki Nyatichi ’20 was sadly interrupted by the untimely death of Kyle Martz, who had been one of her mentors.
  • My trip to Cambridge, England was shortened from three months to six weeks by a last-minute clarification regarding visa requirements from my husband’s employer.
  • I was unable to meet with Colleague 1, because she was seriously ill.
  • Inadequate child care arrangements limited my work time while I was in Cambridge. (This is a lesson learned for my next sabbatical.)
  • Two full paper submissions to PERSUASIVE 2020 were rejected as premature.
  • I fruitlessly pursued a second publication in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
  • The evolving COVID-19 situation meant that co-organizing SIGCSE Pre-Symposium Event took much more time than I had planned.
  • I had planned to travel to several conferences during my sabbatical. COVID-19 meant that one was cancelled and two others moved to an online asynchronous format, which was terrible for networking.
  • By the end of March, we had pulled my daughter from The Kids’ Place. It closed soon thereafter. Due to my greater flexibility, I took primary responsibility for her care at home. This situation persisted until we hired a full-time babysitter at the start of June.

However, I still accomplished a lot.

  • My work with Buyaki led to an accepted presentation at ETHICOMP 2020, and the opportunity to submit a full paper. I submitted the full paper in April, despite my childcare duties, and presented it in June. I took first authorship on this paper, rather than offering it to Buyaki, because I did the bulk of the analysis building on the preliminary reading we had done together. The primary contribution of this paper was to propose and demonstrate the use of media analysis as a technique for value discovery and elaboration in the context of Value Sensitive Design (VSD). This is my first independent methodological contribution to VSD, which I applied as a graduate student and returned to with my move to Whitman five years ago.
  • Because of our work on Just Not Sorry, I enquired with the copyright holder, Def Method, Inc., about their future plans for the software. As a result,
    • They are resuming development of Just Not Sorry;
    • I had a delightful conversation with two interns that made me feel my research would have some real-world impact;
    • I decided to drop my tentative plans to conduct an experimental evaluation study as suggested by PERSUASIVE 2020. Writing the poster proposal and presenting the poster was still a valuable learning experience.
  • The unfortunate circumstances of summer and fall gave me time to follow my curiosity, starting a new software development project inspired by a NYT editorial: Degender the Web. I started it while Buyaki took a break from summer research; continued my work during nap time and in the evenings while in Cambridge; and employed CS major Beszel Hawkins ’20 to continue development while I was otherwise engaged in the fall and spring. The project is currently stalled pending two next steps, one small and one large. The small one is to update the dependency on the Compromise natural language processing library, which went through two major revisions while Beszel was working on other aspects of the project. The large one is to decide whether I want to invest the time in designing and implementing an experimental evaluation study, which will require either learning a lot or recruiting a collaborator with expertise in experimental methods.
  • I discovered the Reading for Gender Bias project and reached out to Mollie Marr about contributing. As a result, I proposed a summer student-faculty research project and worked with a team of five students to develop a web-based user interface for the existing back-end natural language processing (NLP) engine. The UI is deployed, but requires some bug fixes my students weren’t able to complete on their own as I transitioned to preparing for the Fall 2020 semester. Next steps include fixing those bugs, reviewing the state of back-end implementation, identifying “low-hanging fruit” for my next collaboration with undergraduates, and either developing NLP expertise or recruiting a collaborator with expertise in NLP.
  • While working on Degender the Web in summer 2019, I learned the JavaScript programming language, the Chrome extension framework, and tools for JavaScript unit testing and automated in-browser integration testing. In summer 2020, I taught my students about testing in JavaScript and learned the Vue application framework alongside them. This may lead to the development of a new class on Web Development and Automated Testing.
  • My sabbatical gave me the headspace to take a leadership role in the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges, which complements my LACS membership. It also allowed me to actively participate in the summer 2020 CRA meeting, which has resulted in an invitation to run for CRA Board election. [Vote for me!] Both are venues for pursuing my project of mentoring and recruiting potential liberal arts CS faculty.
  • I also got an introduction to a publisher about possibly editing some of my blog posts into a book. To be continued.

I am planning not to apply for a student-faculty research grant this summer, so that I have time and space to carry out the next steps identified above, and to continue my work on College service projects listed below.

And here is the summary of “Professional Development and Activity” for the entire calendar year.

Peer-reviewed publications:

  • Janet Davis and Buyaki Nyatichi ’20. Values and Politics of a Behavior Change Support System. Societal Challenges in the Smart Society (ETHICOMP 2020), Mario Arias-Oliva, Jorge Pelegrin-Borondo, Kiyoshi Murata, and Ana Maria Lara Palma, pp. 299-313. Book available at https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/libro?codigo=769585. This conference paper was the expansion of a peer-reviewed, 2-page extended abstract.
  • Janet Davis. A proposed evaluation of Just Not Sorry, a Technology to Influence Language Use. Adjunct proceedings of the 15th International conference on Persuasive Technology (PERSUASIVE 2020). Peer-reviewed extended abstract (4 pages).
  • Janet Davis, Andrea Tartaro, and Tammy VanDeGrift. Demystifying the Tenure-Track Faculty Search in Computer Science at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. To appear in the Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Annual Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2021). This peer-reviewed article is 6 pages plus references.

Notable blog post:

Presentations:

  • Janet Davis and Grant Braught. Liberal Arts Computing Curricula: Innovations, Challenges, and Opportunities. SIGCSE 2020 Pre-Symposium Event, Portland, OR, March 11, 2020. Peer-reviewed proposal. I co-organized this half-day workshop – including reviewing submissions from the community – but was unable to facilitate in person due to the rapidly developing COVID-19 situation. Grant and I supported colleagues in facilitating the event we had planned.
  • Janet Davis. A proposed evaluation of Just Not Sorry, a Technology to Influence Language Use. PERSUASIVE 2020, online asynchronous, April 20-23, 2020. Peer-reviewed poster.
  • Janet Davis. Guest lecture in CPTR 108, Art and Practice of Computer Science, Walla Walla University. Online synchronous, May 29, 2020.
  • Janet Davis. Values and Politics of a Behavior Change Support System. ETHICOMP 2020, online asynchronous, June 2020. Recording available at https://youtu.be/omqZBn19CV4 . Peer-reviewed extended abstract.

Participation in professional meetings:

  • SIGCSE 2020. Portland, OR, March 11-14, 2020. Cancelled due to COVID-19.
  • PERSUASIVE 2020. Online asynchronous, April 20 – 23, 2020.
  • ETHICOMP 2020. Online asynchronous, June 15 – July 6, 2020.
  • Symposium: Methods, Theories, and Taking Action through Gender and Feminisms in HCI. Hanover, Germany, July 15-16, 2020.. I was accepted to participate, but due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, the event has been postponed to September 2021.
  • Computing Research Association (CRA) Virtual Conference. Online synchronous, July 22-23, 2020. I was a vocal participant in this meeting and I have been invited to run for the CRA Board.
  • Liberal Arts Computer Science (LACS) Consortium annual meeting. Online synchronous, July 27-28, 2020.
  • Math-in-CS Virtual Workshop. Online synchronous, July 30, 2020. This was an unconference; I co-facilitated three sessions including two on online teaching logistics and one on Grading for Equity.

Leadership activities:

  • Liberal Arts Computer Science (LACS) Consortium. Member since 2015.
  • SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges. Member since 2019. Contributed to updating the committee charge upon joining the committee, in addition to organizing the pre-symposium event listed above.

Reviews:

  • Three PERSUASIVE 2020 papers, 12 pages each, 1-2 page reviews.
  • Three CCSC-NW papers, 6 pages each, 1 page reviews.
  • Three SIGCSE 2021 conference panel proposals, 2 pages each, 1 page reviews.
  • One textbook: Jessen Havill, Discovering Computer Science: Interdisciplinary Problems, Principles, and Python Programming, 2nd Chapman & Hall/CRC Textbooks in Computing, October 27, 2020. We have used this textbook in CS 167 for the past five years and I was honored to be invited to review the second edition. I wrote several pages of feedback.
  • External review letter for [Colleague 2]’s tenure case at [Peer Institution]. 

Declined invitations:

  • In January, I was invited to serve on the advisory board for an NSF RIEF grant proposal. I declined due to other commitments.
  • In February, I was invited to speak on supporting women in computing at Salzburg University. I declined due to other commitments.
  • In April, I was invited to review a journal article for Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. I declined due to childcare obligations in the wake of COVID-19.
  • In May, I was invited to write an external review letter for [Colleague 3] at [Another Peer Institution]. I declined due to childcare obligations in the wake of COVID-19.
  • In June, I was invited to review a journal article for Multimodal Technologies and Interactions. I declined due to other commitments.

For “Service to the Community and College” I wrote:

  • I was elected to AITAG [Academic and Instructional Technology Advisory Group] and joined the committee in summer 2020. In addition to participating in committee meetings, I helped to get some faculty questions about emergency remote instruction technology answered in an organized way. I proposed and served as a consultant on the design of the Faculty Contact Preference feature for online office hours implemented by WCTS.
  • As part of the Black Lives Matter movement, I participated in #ShutdownSTEM and #ScholarStrike.
  • I was interviewed by Communications for an upcoming issue of the Whitman Magazine.
  • I was consulted by Steve Setchell concerning the fundraising case for two new tenure lines in Computer Science, and I provided feedback on the written case.
  • I have remained an active participant in the BBB faculty reading and discussion group.
  • Spurred by the Financial Sustainability Review, I have started conversations about an Experience Design major, a Scientific Computing minor, and a Digital Humanities minor. I made an open call for proposals for CS combined majors, which resulted in a proposal for a Geology-CS major (now approved by Division III) and discussion of a CS-Economics major (to be continued this summer).

Finally:

In 50-100 words or less, please list below what you think are two of your most important accomplishments during the period covered by this activity report.

After such a year, there was no way I could keep this to only two accomplishments.

I learned a completely new mode of teaching and started an ambitious experiment with my philosophy of grading. I started conversations about new programs that may become significant draws for prospective students. I hired and mentored department colleagues. I survived.

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