The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hosted a small gathering of national thought leaders in computer science education on Friday, December 11, as part of Computer Science Education Week 2015. Julie Ross, dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT), and Marie desJardins, COEIT associate dean and professor of computer science, attended the event, where participants identified obstacles and opportunities to increase access to computer science curriculum in K-12 schools.
Both Ross and desJardins are known nationally for their work to improve and promote K-12 education in STEM fields, encouraging more girls and underrepresented minority students to pursue STEM careers. desJardins’ recent media coverage related to K-12 computer science has appeared in The Conversation and Fortune.
Computer Science Education Week is celebrated annually in the U.S. around the birthday of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, an early computer programmer who received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1934 and went on to invent the first compiler for programming languages.
Photo by Geoff Livingston, CC by 2.0.
