People: Brief bios for leaders - Computing Educators Oral History Project

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The people who make CEOHP happen: Brief bios

On this page, we provide brief biographies for individuals who have been part of the leadership team, and/or interviewers, and/or a member of one or both of the ITiCSE Working Groups.

Elizabeth Adams

Elizabeth (Liz) Adams Professor Emeritus for the Department of Computer Science at James Madison University. She earned her D.Sc. in Computer Science from George Washington University.
Liz Adams was a member of both the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group and the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group. As part of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, Liz was the interviewee in one practice interview and conducted the practice interview with Andrea Lawrence. During the 2008 ITiCSE conference, she conducted one CEOHP interview.

Vicki L. Almstrum

Vicki Almstrum serves as part of the CEOPH leadership group. She was part of the group who conceived of the CEOHP project starting with the 2003 SIGCSE Symposium in Reno, Nevada, USA. She was co-leader of the ITiCSE Working Groups in 2005 and 2008. During a training workshop at the 2006 SIGCSE Technical Symposium, she was the interviewee for one of the practice interviews and conducted the practice interview with Alison (Young) Clear. Vicki has conducted several interviews for the project.
Vicki conducted a series of evaluation interviews during the last stages of the NSF planning grant and has driven the quality assurance efforts for interview processing. She has been the primary driving force behind major CEOHP portal upgrades in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2021.
Vicki has a Ph.D. in Computer Science Education from The University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation topic was Limitations in the Understanding of Mathematical Logic by Novice Computing Students.
Vicki has taught a variety of computing courses, including discrete mathematics, data structures, and software engineering. Vicki was an adjunct professor at Southwestern University in Spring 2007 and taught the Senior Seminar in Software Engineering that helped flesh out several aspects of the initial versions of the CEOHP web portal.

Anne Applin

Anne Applin is a part of the CEOPH leadership group. Anne was one of the individuals who conceived of the CEOHP project starting with the 2003 SIGCSE Symposium in Reno, Nevada, USA. Anne has used her expertise in web design to help evolve the original CEOHP web portal to make it easier to maintain and to ensure it met appropriate standards for layout and accessibility.
Anne has a Ph.D. in Computer Science Education from The University of Southern Mississippi. Her dissertation, which considered programming instruction and second languages, has the title The application of language acquisition theory to programming concept instruction: chunks versus programs from scratch.
Anne has taught a variety of undergraduate courses, including operating systems, networking, and systems programming. She is currently professor of computer science at Southern Maine Community College in Portland, Maine.

William Aspray

William (Bill) Aspray conducted the first full interview in the CEOHP collection, with Maria Klawe, while a participant in the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group. During that same working group, Bill conducted the practice interview with Barbara Boucher Owens as an example for other Working Group participants. With his background and experience, he has provided expertise and helped a group of individuals whose backgrounds were primarily computer science education begin to learn about and appreciate the techniques for collecting useful and usable oral histories.
Bill is a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He been a senior faculty member in the information schools at Indiana (Bloomington), Texas (Austin), and Colorado (Boulder). He has held leadership positions in professional non-profit organizations such as the Charles Babbage Institute, the IEEE History Center, and the Computing Research Association.
Bill has written or edited some 20 books and 70 articles in the areas of history, policy, and social study of information and information technologies and related topics. Current work is on the history of information in everyday life in America, the informatics of diabetes, Internet and new media studies, and the history of privacy in America.
Bill holds a B.A. in philosophy and mathematics and M.A. in mathematics from Wesleyan University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lecia Barker

Lecia Barker has been a key member of the CEOHP leadership team, bringing to the team her strong background in social science and gender issues. She was co-leader of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group and a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group. She
One line of Lecia’s research focuses on the social climates and educational practices that produce information technology professionals. She also studies the creation of information technology that can improve social and educational practices. Lecia also serves as a senior research scientist for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, for which she has co-authored more than 30 publications intended to improve women’s representation in information technology careers.
Lecia is currently Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies and an Associate Professor in the Information Science Department at University of Colorado Boulder.
Prior to joining The University of Texas at Austin in 2008, Barker was the founding director of the ATLAS Assessment & Research Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Alison Clear

Alison Clear became involved with CEOHP at an early stage. Alison was a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group and has been active in discussions about the project since it was first conceived during the 2003 SIGCSE conference in Reno, NV, USA. During a training workshop at the 2006 SIGCSE Technical Symposium, she was the interviewee for one of the practice interviews and conducted the practice interview with Mary Last. She participated in the interviewer training process during the SIGCSE 2006 conference and, during a sabbatical trip in the USA and UK, conducted several interviews for the CEOHP collection. The CEOHP interview with Alison was conducted by Barbara Boucher Owens on February 28, 2006.
Alison Clear has been Chair of School of Computing of Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, New Zealand, since 2009. Prior to that, from 1997 to 2009, she served as Head of the School of Computing and Information Technology at Unitec New Zealand. Alison was Chair of the National Advisory Committee on Computing Qualifications from 1988 until 1998 and has chaired national and international conferences, including serving as the General Chair of the NACCQ Annual conference in 2006. Alison’s recent research projects include: women and computing, e-learning implementation, computing and information technology education and the Poverty Alleviation Project in Peru.
Alison’s last name changed from “Young” to “Clear” in 2010.

Nell Dale

Nell Dale was a member of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group and has been a vital partner in discussions about the project since it was first conceived during the 2003 SIGCSE conference in Reno, NV, USA. As part of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, Nell was the interviewee for one of the practice interviews and conducted the practice interview with Wanda Dann, as well as the practice interview with Liz Adams. The CEOHP interview with Nell was conducted by Barbara Boucher Owens on April 18, 2006.
Nell, who is now retired, was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Sciences The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Dale is widely known for her textbooks for introductory computing courses and for her pioneering work in Computer Science Education Research.

Wanda Dann

Wanda Dann was a member of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group. As part of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, Wanda was the interviewee for one of the practice interviews
Wanda is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She is Director of the Alice Project, which involves the Alice programming environment and a 3D animation tool that can be used to visualize object-oriented programming concepts. See Dr. Dann’s professional website for more information.

John Impagliazzo

John Impagliazzo was a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group. The CEOHP interview with John was conducted by Alison (Young) Clear on June 28, 2006.
John joined the Computer Science Department at Hofstra University in 1984. He joined the faculty of Qatar University in 2009. He holds undergraduate degrees in both electronics and physics, masters degrees in engineering and mathematics and a Ph.D. in mathematics.
John is known throughout the world for his work in organizing conferences as well as in computing history. He is the author or co-author of six textbooks and over 60 papers and presentations.

Patricia Joseph

Patricia Joseph was a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group.
Patricia is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Slippery Rock University in Slippery Rock, PA. She completed her graduate studies at University of Pittsburgh. Please see Patricia Joseph’s professional website for more detailed information.

Amardeep Kahlon

Amardeep Kahlon was a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group, where she was instrumental in investigating the use of themes to describe interviews in the collection. The CEOHP interview with Amardeep was conducted by Vicki Almstrum on June 18, 2013.
Amardeep is Dean of the Technical Institute for Environmental Professions at Unity College in Maine (more information in this article). Earlier, she was a Professor of Computer Information Systems and Computer Science at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas.

Mary Z. Last

Mary Last was a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group. As a member of the CEOHP leadership team, Mary did quality checks during website updates and created transcripts for many of the video clips before they were uploaded to the CEOHP channel on YouTube. During a training workshop at the 2006 SIGCSE Technical Symposium, Mary was the interviewee for one of the practice interviews and conducted the practice interview with Vicki Almstrum.
Mary has taught at Grand Valley State University, St. Edward’s University, and University of Mary Hardin Baylor. She earned her Ph.D. from Kingston University in the U.K.; her dissertation title was Investigating the group development process in virtual student software project teams.

Andrea Lawrence

Andrea Lawrence was a member of both the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group and the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group. As part of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, she was the interviewee for one of the practice interviews. The CEOHP interview with Andrea was conducted by Barbara Boucher Owens on November 6, 2007.
Andrea has been a faculty member at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia USA since 1983. She is active in a number of several organizations established to support and encourage under-represented populations. She has served as President of the Association of Computer and Information Science/Engineering Departments at Minority Institutions (ADMI).

Barbara Boucher Owens

Barbara Boucher Owens was part of the group that conceived of the CEOHP project starting with the 2003 SIGCSE Symposium in Reno, Nevada, USA and is a part of the CEOPH leadership group. She was a co-leader of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group and a member of the ITiCSE 2008 Working Group. As part of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, Barbara was the interviewee in a longer-than-average practice interview. Barbara was the Primary Investigator (PI) on the NSF planning grant, managing it via Southwestern University. Barbara conducted most of the initial interviews for the project. Barbara developed the initial prototype for the CEOHP web portal and has been the central coordinator for many aspects of CEOHP since its inception.
Barb retired in 2012 from the Math & Computer Science Department at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. She has been in the computing field since 1967 and has been teaching since 1970. Her most recent research grants have been in the areas of ethics in computing and gender issues in computing.
Barb is past chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (ACM/SIGCSE), a past-president of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC), and co-founder of the CCSC South Central Conference.
Barb holds a Ph.D. from New York University, an M.A. from The University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University. Her professional homepage provides additional information.

Viera Proulx

Viera Proulx conducted one CEOHP interview, with one of her instructors at Vassar College, Winifred (Tim) Asprey.
Viera Proulx is a Professor at Northeastern University in Boston and holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the City of New York. She is a member of the IFIP WG3.1 the IFIP Working Group on Secondary Education and is a member of the Board of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC), northeastern region. Dr. Proulx’s professional homepage provides additional information.

Leslie Schwartzman

Leslie Schwartzman was a member of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group. As part of the ITiCSE 2005 Working Group, Leslie conducted the practice interview with Nell Dale.
Leslie is on the faculty of the Computer Science Department at Roosevelt University in Schaumburg, IL. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago; the title of her dissertation was FGP Fine-Grained Persistence for User-Structured Data: A Tool and Its Software Design.