"CS For All": The Design, Implementation, and Results of a New Introductory CS Course

Ran Libeskind-Hadas, Harvey Mudd College

This seminar was cancelled.

“Computer Science for All” is an introductory computer science course taken by all first-year undergraduate students at Harvey Mudd College, regardless of their ultimate choice of major. The course is also a popular elective among students at the other Claremont Colleges and has been adopted by several other colleges and universities. The course endeavors to teach students practical skills (i.e., design, implementation, and testing of programs) while simultaneously conveying the intellectual beauty and breadth of the discipline. I will describe the philosophy, design, and implementation of the course as well as its positive impact on student satisfaction and contributing to near gender-parity in the CS major.

Speaker Biography

Ran “RON” Libeskind-Hadas is the department chair and R. Michael Shanahan Professor of Computer Science at Harvey Mudd College. He received the A.B. in applied mathematics at Harvard University and the M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in algorithms and computational biology. In addition, he is interested in computer science education and currently serves on the U.S. Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council and is co-chair of the Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E).