Glencora Borradaile

Our department has announced a new, entirely online, bachelor’s degree in computer science which can be completed in one year.  Given that we are a public university, this translates to a $17,500 degree*.

I will admit, when I first heard the idea I did not have very good thoughts about it.  My negative thoughts included

• one year? yeah right!
• what about programming languages, theory of computation, AI, etc.?
• are we designing ourselves out of jobs? (courses will be administered by non-tenure-track instructors)
• how will standards be maintained?

But then, I got to hear the details.  First, it is a post-baccalaureate degree.  So, students will already have a bachelor’s degree, and will have need to meet OSU’s post-baccalaureate admissions standards.  They will likely be more mature and perhaps working as they study.  I’m also glad to see that they are cautioning that completing the degree in one year would be a very intensive, full-time schedule and include two and three-year plans of study.  The degree is intended as a second degree, so all optional classes in CS are not mandatory.  Of course, this must ruffle some feathers as many courses that are required for graduation in our regular 4-year, first-degree program are not required by this post-bacc degree.  (I’m glad algorithms made the cut.)  As a post-bacc degree, we will still  have the usual cohort of students seeking a CS degree straight out of high-school.  Finally, it seems there is a consensus to require 2 proctored exams per course and, at least for the first few years, the assignments and exams will be the same as in the on-site classes.

I’ve been thinking more generally about online classes and online degrees and their social implications.  One commenter, pointed out some very valid points of the benefits of online education, that I have to agree with.  This degree provides an opportunity for the un- or under-employed to retrain for less than the cost of a new car.  The flexible schedule and location of the online classes will allow untraditional students to study when they can, at the pace that they can.  I’m excited to see who will complete this program and from where they study.  I’d like to see a concerted effort to recruit women to complete this degree to perhaps counter the gender imbalance in our on-site program.

So, this coming fall, I will be converting my undergraduate algorithms class into an online class in time for a Winter 2013 release.  I’m excited to do this** and I’m sure I will have plenty to say about it in the fall.

* ~$15,000 for tuition (in- or out-of-state) plus additional expenses, such as textbooks (~$50 per course), a compatible laptop or computer (~$600), graduation fee ($300) and 2 proctored exams per course (~$30 each).

** And very glad that my department treats this course development as one class-worth of teaching assignment.

I recently gave a pair of talks in the Math Department’s Applied Math Seminar on basics of TCS.  It was intended for a mathematically mature audience with no background in TCS.  The slides for the talk are available here; they are far from perfect — but I will happily take suggestions on things that should be dropped or added.  Interest in the talk was pleasantly high.  High enough that I plan on doing this again and advertising more broadly — to graduate students in physics, engineering, etc.  I also think it acts as a list of topics about which students should be able to answer questions during a comprehensive exam.

Hint.  Hint.

Take your comment and change any gendered words from male to female and ask yourself “Would I say this to or about a man in the same situation?”

For example:

• “This office is a lot prettier than when I was here” [to a male graduate student, while thumbing the female grad student hard at work] doesn’t change, and your answer would likely be no.
• “Little girl, you will have to work a lot harder to keep up with the men!” [to a student in the first tutorial of first year physics] becomes “Little boy, you will have to work a lot harder to keep up with the women!”, and your answer would likely be no.
• “Be careful, you wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a secretary.” [to a female postdoc as she consults a dictionary to settle a disagreement] doesn’t change and your answer would likely be no.
• “You should be at home, raising children. That is what women are good at.” [to a female professor in her own office] becomes “You should be at home, raising children. That is what men are good at.”, and your answer would likely be no.

Last quarter, three students I was teaching spoke with me about their depression.  Three of the 160 or so students I was teaching. This was the first time a student had spoken with me about their mental health.  I was happy that these students felt that they could approach me.  I was uncertain of what to say, beyond what I would say to a friend in the same situation.  I was happy that these students assured me they had people (professional or not) to speak with. I was worried about the 157 other students.  How many of them were struggling with depression and distress?  These students who approached me were probably more likely to be seeking counselling – if they were comfortable speaking with me about their problems, they probably were alright with speaking to others.

However, most may not be.  As classes get bigger and move online, the sense of community at a university will degrade.  I won’t know my students.  They won’t know me.  They may not even know their fellow students.  Is this an advised model of education for our youth as they become adults?

Applications for attendance at the Women in Theory workshop are due February 29.

The Women in Theory (WIT) Workshop is intended for graduate and undergraduate students in the area of theory of computer science. The workshop will feature technical talks and tutorials by senior and junior women in the field, as well as social events and activities. The motivation for the workshop is twofold. The first  goal is to deliver an invigorating educational program; the second is to bring together theory women students from different departments and foster a sense of kinship and camaraderie.

What I like about this Women in STEM event compared to others is the focus on technical content.  I have been to a number of Women in STEM events and it has, unfortunately, suffered from a “once you’ve been to one you’ve been to them all” feeling.  I wish this workshop had been around in my time.  You may not understand how important it has been to know my fellow female colleagues in theory.  It makes conferences feel much less … sausagey.

I’ll be at the workshop too!  I was invited to speak, and am very excited to be going.  Unfortunately, I’ll have to leave early as I’ll also be starting up the Math/CS REU program at OSU —  applications for that are due today!

(updated: now with links to projects)

A friend asked me, in reference to my post about the call for proposals for REU positions from CRA, “What kind of projects did you have them work on?”

Two years ago, I proposed two projects and used one.  (I was to have two students, but sadly the shuttle carrying one student to her local airport crashed and she ended up hospitalized with serious injuries.  Last I heard, many months after the accident, she was recovering very well and CRA had set up a last-minute local project for her to work on.)  I include here the two project descriptions I submitted to CRA:

• The project I didn’t use was on bicycle route design.
• The project I did use was on a 2D alignment problem.

This summer was spent mostly on experimental work rather than theoretical and I was glad for the experimental plan.

For the OSU Math REU program — now accepting applications! — last summer, I proposed a rough area and at the start of the summer changed my mind (while keeping with the spirit of the original area) so that my two summer students could work with my graduate student on what she had already started.  The summer was very successful, resulting in the completion of a paper in which the undergraduate students proved two main theorems.  I had given a thorough outline for one theorem and very little guidance for the second theorem.  They also experimented with generating examples which I think aided in a feeling of productivity and surely helped them understand the problem at hand better. Their summer project report is available here.

Based on this very limited experience, I have the following advice for theoretical-based REUs:

• If possible, have two undergraduate students working together.
• Involve a graduate student.  Even a junior graduate student can help fill-in course-level knowledge and can help advise if you need to travel during the summer.
• Have an experimental (back-up) component.  If they get stuck, the experimental component can help with a sense of productivity and accomplishment.
• Seek out math, computer-science double majors.

I’d love to hear what other advice/ideas people have.

Did I mention:  the Oregon State University Math REU Program is now accepting applications!  Math/CS double majors are welcome and highly desired!

It was in the week before Christmas. An older friend of mine dropped by, as he does so every few weeks. He is a university employee, not faculty, with whom I struck up a passing friendship shortly after starting at Oregon State.

We chatted for a while. He asked me how a recent work trip went. I told him that it was okay – not wonderful – it was a little tiring. He asked why. I explained that while I knew many people at the workshop, I didn’t feel at ease with many. I rambled mildly and idly about how I thought that it was a side effect of there being few women in the field, that I may feel more at ease if I had more female companionship on such work trips.

Well, he says, it won’t change.

Well, I counter, I hope it will.

No, he continues, it shouldn’t. You [points at me] should be at home, raising children. That is what women are good at.

My jaw drops. I pause. Hoping for him to chuckle. That it’s all a joke. It’s not a joke though. He went on to say that he’s old fashioned, but he thinks that engineering is for men. That women shouldn’t be doing this work.

I was caught off guard. What I expected to be an uplifting social visit, of the type that I had quite enjoyed in the past, resulted in my being on the defensive. My stunned state prevented me from making a commanding speech about equality and sexism. I did manage to say a few things along these lines. But I hardly made an impact. In the desire to not deal with this at present, I made it clear that he needed to leave.

The solicitation for summer research projects for undergraduates from the CRA-W is out: the DREU.  I highly recommend proposing a project.  For those who haven’t heard of it, the DREU are Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (from Underrepresented Groups in Computer Science and Engineering). How it works: profs suggest projects; students apply; the fine people who run DREU match students to profs, handle payment and logistics for the students; the students show up and you get them for 10 weeks.  It has a very high reward to effort ratio.

The students are amazing.  I had one student through DREU two summers ago.  It worked out so well, she came back as my Masters student, and I hope she’ll continue to do a Ph.D. with me.  (Recruitment tool, anyone?)  I would have hoped to repeat this last summer, but I instead advised two (also amazing) students through an in-house REU program run by the math department at OSU.

The deadline for suggesting projects is February 15, and generally they are short on projects, not on students.

I registered for FOCS via our school’s accountant.  It seems to have caused an automatic registration to ActiveAdvantage, run through active.com (which handled the FOCS registrations?).  After a one month “free trial membership”, the school’s credit card was charged $59.95 for a “membership renewal”.

You may want to check your credit card bill to see if you were also charged for this.

Or perhaps I checked or failed to uncheck some box.  But I don’t remember this.

Our faculty email list has had a recent flurry of activity as we discussed changing the choice of programming language for our CS1/2 intro sequence.  When I jumped into the throes, I included my own programming education as I thought it was relevant.  Having never taken an introduction to programming course in university, I tend to think (mistakenly) that everyone should learn to program “on their own”.  What followed was an eruption of personal histories that provides an interesting snapshot:

The punch-card crowd

First up, we have those that revealed their age with their punch-card toting past.  Though amusing, this past is perhaps less relevant to the “what programming language should we use today” discussion:

• “I started with Fortran IV on punch cards. The compiler was the Purdue University Fast Fortran Translator [...] ‘PUFFT, The Magic Dragon’.”
• “My first programming experience was in PL/1 on punch cards with eight hour turn-around time.”
• “My first computer course was [...] in FORTRAN IV, 24-hour turn-around for my punch-cards (if lucky) on an IBM 360.”
• “My first language was ‘MUSIC’, a language that had been developed at my university for teaching purposes. [...] The whole idea of being able to create something on a computer was new and exciting.  I used to rush home from class to do my programming assignments.  Then I’d head off to the keypunch room, wait in line for a keypunch machine, punch up my deck, turn it in to a guy in a window, and come back the next day to get my output.”
• “You guys had it easy! My punched cards had to be taken to another city by a carrier and the results carried back. It took three days to a week to get the results. I was very disappointed that my program had bugs even after three rounds! [...] my first programming experience [was] in Fortran IV, followed by PL-1 and Lisp. My first internship required Basic, and my first job required Cobol and RPG II. They really motivated me to go to grad school. I learned C++ and Java while teaching them.”
• “Fortran IV : 1975 : Burroughs B6700, (punchcards)
  Binary : 1976 : Data General Nova, (frontpanel bootstrap loader)
  Basic : 1976 : Zilog Z8 microcontroller
  Z80 assembly : 1980 : IMSAI 8080
  Occam : 1983 : INMOS Transputer! [...]“