Step 84: Set Summer Goals

To ease myself back into a writing schedule, I am presenting my goals for the summer:

• Produce publishable results with my research student. This is the first time I have had a CS summer research student, and I have high hopes that her work will lead to usable experimental results by the end of the summer, if she does not help with the writing as well.
• Write a paper by myself. In addition to my student, I also have a project I would like to work on, again with the goal of a submittable paper by the end of the summer.
• Complete my annual and pre-tenure reviews. At Oxy, pre-tenure faculty are required to submit an annual report of our activities. Because I’m coming up for my third year, I must also write a pre-tenure review, essentially a check-up to make sure that I am on track for tenure. I am unclear at this point how different these reports should be, but I’ve heard that the annual review is backwards-looking, while the pre-tenure review is more about what I will do in the few years until my tenure case.
• Formalize CS recruitment. Now that we have a department, I want to formalize a few things that I’ve been doing on an ad-hoc basis. One of these is the recruitment of students, both in funneling them towards taking computer science, but also in supporting and encouraging students who are struggling, and also compliment students who do well. Along with this effort, I would like to start thinking about shared curricula for introductory classes. This will likely be a year-long conversation, but planning for it can start now.
• Plan for my two Fall courses. As my third time teaching CS1, the major structure of the course is fairly set. I am still creating new assignments just to keep things fresh, and for the fall I hope to introduce virtual reality into the course. I also hope to more deliberately include assignments that speak to all three of the sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities. My other course is the Cog Sci senior seminar, where my role is mostly to mentor students in their projects and their writing. It will be my first time teaching the course, but I actually look forward to strengthening our students’ writing.