In my last post, I shared my colleague John Stratton’s response to Whitman’s move to online learning. In this post, I share our departmental response addressing logistical concerns. The major headings: lab access; lab aides, class mentors, and virtual office hours; departmental community; information for current and rising seniors; advising and major/minor declarations; the silver lining.
Yesterday, President Kathy Murray announced that Whitman will move to online learning for the remainder of the semester. Though it’s clearly the right decision, we are all disappointed as we revise our plans and expectations for the next several months.
My colleague John Stratton is serving as department chair this year while I am on sabbatical. John gave me permission to share his email to our students as a guest post here. I couldn’t have said it better myself. My next post will address the logistical plans we made at this morning’s department meeting (with appropriate social distancing!) Continue reading
In November, I wrote about launching our search to fill the tenure-track position vacated by Andy Exley after he departs at the end of this academic year. While I’m sad to see Andy go, I’m thrilled that we were able to hire William Bares, currently Associate Professor and C. Richard Crosby Distinguished Teaching Chair at the College of Charleston. Continue reading
Here we are about to round out the first five years of the computer science program at Whitman! I am still on sabbatical in the spring (yay!) but I’ve offered to do my usual pre-registration round-up based on information my colleagues have provided. Continue reading
In this post, I briefly discuss my doings of the last six weeks under two headings (“Yay, I’m on sabbatical!” and “Hey, I’m on sabbatical!”) and four sub-headings (“Scholarship”, “Personal”, “Service”, and “Things left undone”). Continue reading
My latest post appears in Computing Research News and also here. Continue reading
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 |
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
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!
It’s the first week of classes and time for an update on enrollments. In short, Whitman CS courses are enrolled at full capacity this fall. Continue reading