time to read:
The details: Jeremiah’s path is an excellent example of success not looking like a straight line from point “A” to point “B”. He was first an undergrad in computer science at UF, and then completed an MS degree in computer engineering in 2007. For over a decade, he taught in, then directed, the Game Development program at Full Sail University. Always having wanted to continue his education, Jeremiah came back to school part-time, then full-time, and graduated from the UF CISE Computer Engineering Ph.D. program in 2020.
Dissertation project/topic: Jeremiah’s main research interest was in how students learn computer programming. Blocks-based environments had become widespread for K-12 learning, but college undergrads were still expected to jump right into directly writing lines of code, regardless of their prior experience. In his dissertation, Jeremiah investigated the uses of, attitudes toward, design of, and efficacy of visual programming environments for college students in the Bridging Languages project.
Committee members (besides me): Dr. Christina Gardner-McCune (co-chair), Dr. Kristy Boyer, Dr. Joseph Wilson (now emeritus), Dr. Corinne Huggins-Manley, and Dr. David Weintrop (at UMD).
Where are they now: Jeremiah is currently a faculty member in the UF Engineering Education department. He co-directs the Engaging Learning Lab, where they design learning experiences for K-12 and undergraduate students that focus on engagement through fun, especially for computer science learning. He has also been the Director of (the) Computer Engineering (program) in EED since 2021.
Top publications: Jeremiah’s top-cited paper from his time in the INIT Lab with me is a case study on using blocks-based and hybrid-based environments for college-level intro programming classes, published at the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) in 2020, with 28 citations as of today. His top-cited paper as a faculty member so far is a collaboration around teaching post-COVID in the Proceedings of the Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE-WGR) from 2021, which already has 60 citations!
Proud advisor moment: Hooding Jeremiah alongside co-advisor Dr. Christina Gardner-McCune at the Fall 2021* graduation ceremony. 🥰 (Bonus: watching Jeremiah establish a successful international partnership study-abroad program on cross-cultural engineering & design with Kyoto University in Japan!)
Jeremiah is making waves and we can’t wait to see what’s next! ❤️
*thanks COVID!
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