In my job I have spent a lot of time visiting some of the top computer science university departments in the US. I’ve also had the chance to talk to professors from many other universities. But I much confess that my favorite of the big name schools is Carnegie Mellon. Nothing against any of the other schools as they have some great people and facilities. I just have a bias towards CMU. There are a couple of reasons for that but a big one is that I have been lucky enough to attend summer workshops at CMU several times.

CMU has been running summer workshops to training high school teachers for over 20 years. I was first here as a fairly new teacher in 1997 to learn how to teach the AP CS course in C++ and how to recruit and retain female students. It was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot an make a bunch of friends who I have kept in touch with over the years. I was back a few years later to learn how to teach the AP CS course in Java. Horrible language but a wonderful workshop.

I have always felt welcome at CMU as a high school teacher. The faculty at CMU (remember this is one of the top CS schools in the world and some would argue the very best) have always welcomed high school teachers, treated them with respect and make them feel like peers. It is an incredibly welcome experience. CMU’s department of Computer Science cares deeply about teaching. The school of computer science also has some unbelievable and internationally famous research institutes but that doesn’t mean that teaching undergraduates gets short shrift. CMU has three tracks for faculty. Research only, research and teaching and pure teaching. The teaching faculty is incredibly knowledgeable which is not surprising since there are amazing opportunities for them to work with and learn from the rest of the faculty.  At the same time they are very focused on teaching and not distracted by research. They do a great job.

CMU is known among computer science people for the school of CS but there are many other world class schools and departments here. And in fact the school of CS works with many of these other departments in their research institutes. Drama and Artificial Intelligence are working on  the Roboceptionist project. Robotics also works with electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. And the examples go on and on.

The campus is a city campus on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. It is a short walk to several Carnegie museums and the University of Pittsburgh. There is construction everywhere on campus and it has been that way as long as I have been coming here. Right now they are digging out for the foundations of a new building that will be named after a guy who works at Microsoft names Bill gates. Apparently he gave them some money to help out with the building. It is kind of interesting that a school founded by a man who started the trend of ultra-rich people creating foundations is now getting funds from a modern example of ultra philanthropy.

I have been at CMU to observe the first day of a new workshop for teachers called CS4HS. The first day was very impressive and I wish I could have stayed for the whole workshop. We started with a talk by Jeannette Wing, the head of the Computer Science department, who talked about Computational Thinking.  It was an inspiring talk and I highly recommend her paper on the subject. And there was a lot more and will be more in the next two days.

One of the great thing about being at CMU Saturday was the chance to reconnect with a number of high school teachers I have meet at previous conferences and workshops at CMU and other places. Some wonderful teachers and really great people are here. I hope I can come back again soon.