CRA-E Announces New Co-Chair, Welcomes New Board Members, and Thanks Departing Members for Their Service

By Julia Sepúlveda, Program Associate, CRA-E

The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is thrilled to announce Michael Hilton (Carnegie Mellon University) as its newest co-chair. Lori Pollock (University of Delaware) will be stepping down from her role as co-chair, but will continue to serve as a board member, assisting with the UR2PhD and CSGrad4US programs. 

CRA-E is also excited to welcome Evan Peck (University of Colorado, Boulder), Jennifer Campbell (University of Toronto), and Jonathan Bell (Northeastern University) as its newest board members. These members bring with them a wealth of experience from designing and implementing inclusive curricula to organizing community building activities for students. We are looking forward to their support in promoting CRA-E’s mission of addressing society’s need for a continuous supply of talented and well-educated computing researchers. 

CRA-E would like to thank outgoing board members, Gary Holness (Clark University) and Victoria Interrante (University of Minnesota) for their service. Gary, who joined in 2021, assisted with recognizing and selecting recipients for the annual faculty mentor awards. Additionally, he provided technical expertise in creating and maintaining visual and static resources for the Student Pathways into Research in Computing (SPARC) site. Victoria joined the board in 2021 and contributed to several projects, including serving on the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award selection committee, developing materials distinguishing MS and PhD programs, and designing of the SPARC website. The CRA-E team is deeply appreciative of their contributions to CRA-E activities and wishes them success in their future endeavors. 

 

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Evan Peck 

Associate Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder

Evan Peck is an Associate Professor of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder (https://peck.phd), and the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies (beginning in July 2024). Evan’s research draws on the fields of Information Visualization and Human-Computer Interaction, and focuses on reimagining the processes and tools we use to share data with more diverse communities. Prior to CU Boulder, Evan was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Bucknell University (2014-2023) where he developed (and still develops!) public resources for academic careers in primarily-undergraduate institutions (PUIs), research pathways for undergraduate students, and the integration of ethics and social responsibility into core computing curriculum. Evan previously worked as a Visiting Scientist in the Visualization Group at MIT (2021-2022) and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tufts University in 2014. For a recent article on Evan’s work, see #TechEthics, by CU’s CMCI Now Magazine.

 

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Jennifer Campbell

Professor, Teaching Stream, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto

Jennifer Campbell is a Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where she has worked since 2003. Her research focuses on computer science education, and she is particularly interested in introductory programming and the experiences of computer science students. Jen was awarded the Faculty of Arts & Science Outstanding Teaching award in 2014 and the University of Toronto President’s Teaching Award in 2021. She has received grants to support a variety of pedagogical initiatives, including developing teaching materials, designing new curricula, and conducting research studies to assess the outcomes of novel approaches. She co-developed her department’s first flipped course and an online version of the same course. Jen also co-authored a textbook on introductory programming in Python and co-developed two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on learning to program, which were amongst the first MOOCs in the world. She co-founded the Second-year Learning Community program, which has since expanded from her department to ten other departments.

 

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Jonathan Bell 

Associate Professor, Northeastern University

Jon is an Associate Professor directing research in Software Engineering at Northeastern University, focusing on topics including software testing, continuous integration and open-source ecosystems. At Northeastern, Jon teaches Software Engineering. Previously while at George Mason University, Jon received a university-wide Teacher of Distinction award for his courses in distributed systems, web development, and program analysis. He also serves on a variety of program committees for top software engineering conferences. As part of his efforts to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in his research communities, Jon helped form the ICSE Student Mentoring Workshop Steering Committee after co-organizing the student mentoring workshop twice at ICSE, and four times at SPLASH. In Summer 2020, Jon co-founded the Clowdr open source project to help support virtual academic conferences, and subsequently co-founded a startup to provide paid support and development for the project. His contributions to the object-oriented programming community were recognized with the 2020 Dahl-Nygaard Junior Researcher Prize. His research has been funded by the NSA and the NSF, and he is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award. His other interests include photography, cooking and cycling.