My time
Last spring and summer I instituted “my time”. I started scheduling off 3hr blocks of time 2-3 times a week on my calendar for research. This happened around the time that I started making my...
View ArticleIncentivizing healthy group dynamics in classes
I’ve just finished teaching our undergraduate algorithms course this quarter. I changed the course quite a bit from previous iterations. This was mostly because I have been designing an online...
View ArticleClassroom competition, TSP style
I changed up a few things in my undergraduate algorithms course this year. I probably wouldn’t have if I wasn’t charged with designing an online version of the same course, one that would be static...
View ArticleWhat would Aaron Swartz want you to do?
I hadn’t checked my rss-feed reader since the winter break. After the (deserved) attention of the life and untimely death of Aaron Swartz, I was interested in hearing the thoughts of my fellow...
View ArticleAlgorithms group doubles!
I am super happy to announce that Amir Nayyeri will be joining our faculty at Oregon State next year! Amir completed his Ph.D. with Jeff Erickson at UIUC and has been, for the past year, post-doc’ing...
View ArticleOSU announces new theoretical computer science group!
More exciting news from Oregon State! Mike Rosulek will be joining our faculty in September. Mike will bring some great complexity expertise to our department, but it is for his contributions to the...
View ArticleThe power of a sysadmin
If you haven’t heard, you must have your head in the sand. And if you haven’t seen the Guardian’s interview of Edward Snowdon, former NSA sysadmin, you should. The actions of one sysadmin could...
View ArticleColor blindness considerations
I once had a student in class ask about the colors I was using on the whiteboard because he was color blind. Since then, I have tried to be good about what colors I use when teaching. Yesterday I was...
View ArticleTSP in 1-planar graphs
I recently came back from a Dagstuhl I organized with Phil, Claire and Daniel on optimization algorithms for planar graphs. I think I finally caught up for the week away and sat down this afternoon to...
View ArticleStill hiring at OSU: 6 positions open this year
Have I mentioned that we’re hiring? The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University invites applications for up to six full-time nine month tenure-track positions...
View ArticleMentoring junior faculty — what does your school do?
I’ve been charged (with the help of others) with formalizing our junior-faculty mentoring practices. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ve been looking into what other universities do. It’s a little...
View ArticleWomen in Theory Workshop: Call for Participation
via Lisa Zhang, Tal Rabin and Shubhangi Saraf: The Women in Theory (WIT) Workshop is intended for graduate and undergraduate students in the area of theory of computer science. The workshop will...
View ArticleUndergraduate algorithms study guide
A year ago, I was just finishing putting together materials for the new online version of our undergraduate algorithms course. I’ve finally compiled all that material into one webpage: available here....
View ArticleSchool pride in taking a stance on climate change
I can’t help but share my pride in my fellow faculty for taking a strong stance on climate change. Our university is a leader in climate change research and is now moving toward being a similar leader...
View ArticleBringing current events into the technical classroom
I spent last summer thinking about how to bring something related to the climate crisis into my fall undergraduate algorithms class. In this class, I have converged on having 4-5 projects covering...
View ArticleConversations with graduate students
A male graduate student told me he started taking a yoga class only to find that there was only one other man and the remaining 29 were women. He said he didn’t feel like he belonged and so he dropped...
View ArticleSearch for new Head of Department of Mathematics at OSU
via Dean Pantula: The College of Science of Oregon State University invites applications for the position of Head of the Department of Mathematics, beginning in the Fall of 2014. This is an open search...
View ArticleThe difference between a hole and a handle
I have learnt topology in a very haphazard fashion. So sometimes when I observe something for the first time, my mind is blown. Topology is beautiful. Today’s lesson was in the difference between a...
View ArticleThe ball-coverage property and a great journal turnaround time
Erin Wolf Chambers and I had a paper accepted yesterday to the journal Discrete & Computational Geometry, a journal I now highly recommend. This entry is a story about that paper as well as the...
View ArticleSource for open-source textbooks for computer science?
My soon-to-defend Ph.D. student, Theresa Migler, pointed me to the Open Textbook Initiative by AIM, with the question as to whether a similar resource exists or is in development for computer science....
View ArticlePresenting Dr. Theresa Migler-VonDollen
Yesterday, Wednesday May 28, my first Ph.D. student defended her thesis: Theresa Migler-VonDollen. Although you can’t tell from the picture, attendance at this was the highest any of us had seen — 15...
View ArticleWonderful instructor for hire
Theresa Migler-VonDollen, my recent Ph.D. graduate, is looking for a position for one year. She is set to join Maryknoll in summer 2015 to serve as an educator in low-to-middle-income countries, when...
View ArticleThe negative impacts of random conference decisions
The NIPS experiment is making waves. If you are unaware, for the last NIPS conference, the PC was broken into two independent halves A and B. A random selection of the submissions were assigned to...
View ArticleWith great privilege comes great responsibility
I received the official word this week that I have earned tenure (and promotion to associate professor). As I learned not too long ago, the awarding of tenure doesn’t just happen unexpectedly with...
View ArticleRaises during an economic downturn
written on March 1, 2012 and saved for publication until tenure OSU lifted the freeze on pay raises after a 2+ year hiatus due to the economic downturn. Across the board, faculty received a 4% raise....
View ArticleRecovering from depression with a 40-hour work week
written on May 8, 2012 and saved for publication until tenure Sometime in the fall of 2011, it became apparent to me that I was depressed. More than likely, I had been depressed for several years...
View ArticleA question you shouldn’t ask
written on June 26, 2012 and saved for publication until tenure I’m thinking about this on the heels of the Women in Theory workshop, but it’s something that has been irking me since the start of grad...
View ArticleWork is work and it shouldn’t be expected on the weekends
written on December 27, 2013 and saved for publication until tenure A month or so ago, the STOC’14 PC chair took an informal poll of when we wanted the PC meeting: Friday & Saturday, Saturday &...
View ArticleClimate change and research choices
written on July 3, 2014 and saved for publication until tenure A friend who is making a career change asked me “If you could do anything else, what would would it be?” That was two weeks ago. I still...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 0
The graduate school at OSU is considering adding a new learning outcome for all graduate students as a mechanism for reducing an observed rise in discrimination in our graduate program (based on...
View ArticleRaises, Salaries and Greediness
written on July 3, 2014 and saved for publication until tenure Someone told me once that Knuth turned down raises at Stanford and that this led to problems because they had rules about salary...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 1
I had the second class for our pilot graduate diversity & ethics class; I discussed the first class last week. I asked the students to read Leaning In: A Student’s Guide to Engaging Constructively...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 2
The third meeting of our graduate diversity & ethics class went by quickly. I broke the students into small groups of 5-6 to discuss ethical considerations of competition and mutual aid in two...
View ArticleIgnorance is bliss
written on March 21, 2014 and saved for publication until tenure I like to think that I have become more socially conscious since the onset of my adult life. I like to think that when I hear of...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 3
For the fourth meeting of our graduate diversity & ethics class, I had a bit of a break. Three colleagues from my department generously came to give a panel on research ethics. I asked these...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 4
For our fifth meeting of the Graduate Responsible Conduct of Research and Difference, Power & Discrimination class, I had the students read three stories that involve research misconduct or...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 5
I’m posting this late, but better than never: For last Friday’s class, I adapted an exercise we use in the Faculty DPD Academy that has us reflect on the basic assumptions (and any resulting...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 6
Today, we held a discussion specifically on (overt) sexism in sciences. I assigned three readings on recent-ish occurrences describing Nobel-Prize winner Tim Hunt’s comments, Satya Nadella’s advice to...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 7
This week, I turned to dealing with incidences of ‘local’ discrimination. I asked students to read these guidelines on how to challenge oppressive moments before class, with the goal of instilling the...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Week 8/9
Because of Thanksgiving, we only met in Week 8. We had a guest lecture by Anne Gillies from our Office of Equity and Inclusion. Anne gave an overview of implicit bias, what it is, how it arises and...
View ArticleGraduate Teaching on Diversity: Recap
This review of the diversity & ethics class is much delayed. Partly this is because in the last class I gave a survey to the students asking about their experiences in the class — it was an in...
View ArticleFaculty hiring decision processes
In a recent faculty meeting, we discussed the process by which we make hiring decisions. A college-level rule seems to dictate that the faculty provide feedback on the candidates for a given position,...
View ArticleFossil Fuel Divestment at OSU: A Brief History
For nearly 3 years, I have worked with faculty, students and community members on fossil fuel divestment at Oregon State University, asking the Foundation (who manages OSU’s half-billion dollar...
View ArticleOSU faculty call for fossil fuel divestment in open letter
[from the press release] More than one hundred members of the academic community at Oregon State University have signed an open letter calling on the OSU Foundation to divest from fossil fuels. Signers...
View Article5 talks in a lecture series at OSU. Only 4 are promoted on OSU’s YouTube...
In fall 2015, a student group, Allied Students for Another Politics (ASAP!), on campus organized a series of five panels called “Radical Visions Towards Another Politics”: Revolutionary Unions and the...
View ArticleTeaching Communications Security and Social Movements
My reaction to the Snowden disclosures was a mix of “I’m not surprised” with “this is a lot worse than I imagined”. Not long after, I went to a small workshop and during breaks tried to engage...
View ArticleThe law does not and should not define our morals
I attended the Advanced in Security Education workshop earlier this week where I gave a lightning talk about our Communications Security and Social Movements class. The last lightning talk (which,...
View ArticleIBM and the Holocaust — why wasn’t this on my radar?
I have spent the last couple of years teaching folks about surveillance and what they can do about it, primarily in partnership with the Civil Liberties Defense Center and through a interdisciplinary...
View ArticleDiscrimination and the conference publication system
After Trump’s travel ban was upheld by SCOTUS, I started thinking of ways that we could materially help our affected students and colleagues. Those on visas from “banned” countries are at best...
View ArticleWeed and Geotags: The Danger and Uselessness of Social Media Monitoring
In 2016, the Brennan Center for Justice identified 151 local and state law enforcement agencies in the United States that have subscribed to social media monitoring services such as Geofeedia, Media...
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