How did you get started in computer science?

Computer science was always a part of my life. Both of my parents had degrees in math and physics and became computer scientists. My dad worked at NASA Goddard and became a well-known expert in networking. My mom also started out at NASA Goddard doing data entry, then learning how to code, earning a CS degree from JHU, and becoming a principal software engineer for the National Weather Service, where she helped create the forecasting systems for severe storms that are still in use today.

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, where a lot of educational opportunities were available to young people. I took a Fortran class at Howard Community College during my senior year in high school and really enjoyed it. We were using punch cards, so programming was a slow process, but I love solving puzzles. I’m a competitive crossword puzzle enthusiast (I even go to annual competitions and have won prizes!). Although I always enjoyed math in school, I didn’t see myself as a mathematician, but CS seemed like the perfect match. When I took an Intro to Psychology class as an elective, I became fascinated by cognitive questions: how do we pay attention, make sense of sensory input, learn new things, and solve problems? Those questions led me into the field of artificial intelligence. I had always planned to go to grad school, but I didn’t know quite where it would lead. After getting a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, I worked at SRI international (in Menlo Park, California) as a researcher for about 10 years. Eventually I applied for academic jobs, which brought me back to the East Coast to become an assistant professor at UMBC.

Why did you advocate to start the MCCE?

As I settled in and got tenure at UMBC, which is known for high-quality undergrad education, I could see that their intro CS classes were not as engaging and inclusive as they needed to be for a diverse range of students. They tended to be taught as "weed-out courses" and were a bit on the dry side. I collaborated with colleagues to grow the diversity of the student body by changing and updating courses and recruiting more diverse students. In 2012, as part of our efforst to reach out to high school CS teachers, I received a Google grant to run a summer camp for teachers at UMBC. That activity led to the formation of the Maryland chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association, along with more efforts to find out who the CS teachers in Maryland were (nobody had a list at the time!), how to support them, and how to help them reach a more diverse population. 

Our team started to grow, including Dianne O'Grady-Cunniff (who later became the Director of MCCE), Pat Yongpradit (who became the Chief Academic Officer for Code.org), Joe Greenawalt (CS teacher at La Plata HS), Jan Plane (who was the Director of the Maryland Center for Women in Computing at the University of Maryland, College Park), and Megean Garvin (who later became the Director of Research and Assessment at MCCE). We applied for NSF funding, which led to a substantial grant to develop a high school CS curriculum with broader appeal than the traditional coding class and to build a CS education community in Maryland. That grant supported a mini-summit in August 2012 and our first statewide CS summit in May 2013.  

At the 2013 summit, we achieved consensus among the 100 or so attendees that our initial goal should be for every high school to have a high-quality CS course, so that every student has access to CS opportunities. For that to happen, there needed to be a great deal of administrator outreach and teacher training. After we developed our "CS Matters" AP CS Principles curriculum, we began to train teachers with diverse backgrounds to teach students with diverse backgrounds. By that time, I was an Associate Dean at UMBC, and had come to realize that the only way to sustain the work would be to empower others by having infrastructure in place at the state level to continue this work for the long term. We needed funding, support, and the right people, so we started to work on solving that problem. Around that time, we started to work with the newly created Code.org and joined the NSF-supported ECEP Expanding Computer Science Education Pathways alliance of state-level initiatives, as one of the earliest states to focus on K-12 CS education. Those organizations helped us to work with state legislators to advocate for funding to support CS education -- which eventually led the Maryland state legislature to pass the "Securing the Future: Computer Science Education for All" act in 2018, committing $5 million of initial funding and $1 million annually to operate the Maryland Center for Computing Education (hosted by the University System of Maryland in partnership with UMBC).

What do you think still needs to be done for CS Education?

Now that we have sustainable infrastructure for CS education here in Maryland, and people committed to this work, we need to continue to adapt to the inevitable changes in CS. Many good things have happened, but in some ways so little has changed: there is still inequitable representation in the CS workforce, especially in leadership roles. Many people are still left out of technology creation and the opportunities to learn about it, which is unfair to those people and which means that future technology is less likely to be developed in a way that benefits everyone.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are having a huge impact on society, but the study of their inner workings is very math- and statistics-intensive rather than focusing on ethical impact, and the work doesn’t appeal to everyone. There are great opportunities to solve big problems, but the people who are developing this technology need to bring all different voices to the table. In too many cases, tech companies have shut down the voices of people who raise questions about potential negative impacts, when what we really need is to listen to these voices and consider the consequences of what we are creating.