Computer science department chairs from numerous Indiana universities and colleges around the state have formed a Computer Science (CS) Advisory Board to help meet state goals for computer science education in Indiana.
“Our collective mission,” explains board co-founder Esfan Haghverdi, executive associate dean for undergraduate education at Indiana University’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, “is to extend teacher professional development programs, addressing current opportunity gaps for Indiana teachers, students, and industry partners.”
The Advisory Board's priority is to help “pave” computing pathways at the high school level, smoothing the student transition from high school to career launch. It will serve school districts, teachers, students, and industry partners by focusing on high-demand career courses, adding capacity to college board course training, and establishing dual-credit pathways for coursework in advanced programming, cybersecurity, software engineering, and data science. At the middle school and elementary levels, it will add capacity to teacher training programs and expand outreach activities that target teachers, students, and families. Goals include hosting K-8 cybersecurity teacher workshops around the state and assisting schools in the development ofassessable, grade-level alignment to the CS state standards, with curriculum cross-walked to other subject standards.
To be effective,the Advisory Board programs will support the state’s strategic STEM plan, explains board co-founder Karen Morris, program director of the University of Notre Dame AP-TIP IN Program. The Advisory Board can help integrate computer science into STEM coursework from the ground up, which will accelerate the state goal of achieving national recognition in preparing a career ready, STEM-skilled workforce.
Advisory Board institutions, which are located around the state, add immediate capacity at various geographic regions. Although some of the participating institutions have scheduled the Advisory Board programs to begin in the fall, many Advisory Board members already have initiatives underway. News about recently initiated programs from partners such asBall State, Goshen College, Hanover College, Indiana State, Indiana Wesleyan, IU, IU Northwest, IU South Bend, IUPUI, Purdue Fort Wayne, and Notre Dame will be coming in the near future.
The Advisory Board has partnered with the Indiana Department of Education to host the state’s third-annual Computer Science Education Summit with the goal of supporting collaboration and networking among all stakeholders in computer science education, including higher education. Called Flipping the Switch, the Summit brings together teachers, administrators, counselors, industry partners, and university faculty to collaborate, share best practices, and deepen Indiana Computer Science. Register at http://bit.ly/IN-CS-Summit2019.