Amber Settle

New energy for an old course

People who read this blog with any regularity know that I primarily teach introductory programming. There are a lot of reasons for that, of course: there are more sections of introductory programming than anything else in the School of Computing (SoC); pedagogy and…

CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.

America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.

Watch and share his message.

Backchannel communication

Today is the start of final exams at DePaul, ending the long and annoying time of quarter-system purgatory. As a result, I finished my assignment grading last week, something that I always celebrate since grading is the second most hated task of my job. (The most hated:…

A brief reprieve

We have officially hit the hardest part of the academic year at DePaul, the time when everyone at a Northern Hemisphere institution on the semester system is done and posting happy graduation pictures on social media but we have another 3 weeks of our quarter. I'm not struggling…

A Letter to the Computing Research Community from Greg Hager Last week, CRA shared the news that Greg Hager would be stepping down as NSF Assistant Director for the CISE Directorate. As a follow-up to that announcement, we are sharing the following letter fr…

🧪 The head of NSF's computer science directorate, Greg Hager, just resigned.

"My ability to carry out my vision, to provide a voice for computing research, and to provide authentic leadership to the community are diminished to the point that I can have more impact outside NSF than within it."

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Learning and failure

If you do a search on this blog for the word "failure" you will find a lot of entries, including some dating back more than a decade. In one from 2014, I specifically talk about failure in the introductory programming classes that I teach, and re-reading it I could have…

An excellent birthday

I served for many years on the SIGCSE Board, something that I enjoyed doing and something that has many fond memories associated with it. But one of the things that I did not enjoy was being away from Chicago so often on my birthday. The SIGCSE Technical Symposium often…

The vibe of 2025: "In Memoriam. Law." Seen at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

Live But Not Active: Minimal Effect with Passive Live Coding | Proceedings of the 56th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1

Friends who are in Pittsburgh for 2025 SIGCSE TS: don't miss Andrea Watkins presenting our live coding work! Her presentation is Friday afternoon, and her practice talk suggests it will be amazing. A link to the paper for those like me who won't be there in person: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Software testing can literally be a matter of life and death cacm.acm.org/news/how-sof...

A form of resistance

Most of January and February have felt like an endless gauntlet of bad news. I had completely forgotten the feeling of relief I had when Biden assumed the presidency of the U.S. and I stopped waking up every morning dreading the news. I definitely remember now the exhausted…

Science funding agency threatened with mass layoffs National Science Foundation staff heard the plans at a meeting Tuesday.

25%-50% cuts to NSF www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

Academic Preparation vs Job Title The confusion between Teaching-Track and Tenure-Track is creating a class system in academia.

Recommend Manuel's post about tenure track vs teaching track academic positions in a CS context. maperezquinones.medium.com/academic-pre...

Google search for "caffeine per day" AI Overview gives potentially deadly advice, suggesting that 10 energy drinks per day is 400mg caffeine. It's actually around 2000. "The recommended daily caffeine intake for healthy adults is up to 400 milligrams (mg). This is equivalent to about four cups of brewed coffee or 10 cans of energy drinks. However, individual caffeine tolerance varies, and some people may experience negative effects at lower doses. It is important to listen to your body and adjust your caffeine intake accordingly. Pregnant women, children, and people with certain medical conditions may need to limit their caffeine intake further. Consult with a healthcare professional for personalized advice."

How is this production technology?

Here's Google Gemini potentially getting someone killed. Ten energy drinks is typically 1600-3000 mg of caffeine.

Pride and concern

It's the start of a new calendar year, which is traditionally a time for reflecting on what you've been doing and what you might do differently. This January several things are converging to make me think about DEI and broadening participation in computing (BPC). The first event…

We’re cancelling the guilty part of guilty pleasures. Wanna read romance books and drink cheap wine? Valid. Watch the trashiest reality show and scroll through Amazon? I support this. Listen to the same early 2000s pop song a thousand times in a row? Why stop there? Find that joy and SQUEEZE.

Discouraging news

I have spent a lot time thinking about and working on gender and computing. If you look at my publications, a reasonable chunk of them have to do with representation in computing, including a line of papers about the linked-courses learning community that a colleague and I ran…

I'm so excited to see my co-author Bedour Alshaigy presenting at the very first SIGCSE Virtual conference!

Are you attending SIGCSE Virtual? Don't miss the discussion on our paper How Do You Solve A Problem Like Recruitment? On The Hiring and Retention of Computing Academics.

Work led by amazing Bedour Alshaigy and with fantastic co-authors Natalie Kiesler and @tasettle.bsky.social

Join us on Dec 5!

Folks who think a gathering of scientists constitutes an echo chamber have likely never attended a conference.

@theophano-the-cat.bsky.social works in computing education at St. John's University.

Just one student Yesterday was the last day of the Fall quarter at DePaul, and it was a surprisingly good quarter for me. I had two groups of highly engaged students, and for the first time in a long time I didn&#8…

ambersettle.wordpress.com/2024/11/20/j...