My research background is in cognitive science. I'm fascinated with how the brain works and how computational models, along with neurophysiological data, can facilitate understanding of how things such as short-term memory work. I'm also interested in how best to teach computer science at the introductory level and how to promote CS, especially among female students.

I teach mainly introductory lab courses. These are the hands-on classes where students actually write code to solve problems. A typical problem might be to write Javascript to validate a form in a webpage (CS110), or to write Java code to perform image manipulations such as rotation or crop (CS111), or to write MATLAB code to display an MRI slice of brain data from a particular viewpoint (CS112), or to write Java code to create a graphical user interface (GUI) to allow the user to access a database and sort and select data by certain criteria (CS230).

My most recent honors thesis student examined the influence of the programming environment─a graphical drag-and-drop setup versus typing text into an editor window─upon retention of programming knowledge.

College Computer Science Website