The spring semester has wrapped, the grades are in, commencement was last Thursday. I'm still in that transition period between the frenetic end of a semester and the calm agenda of the summer. Maybe one thing preventing me from moving on is the pile of 4000 alumni surveys in my office, waiting to be sent out. I'm putting together a gaggle of student assistants later in the week to stuff envelopes. All in the line of duty (as chair of the outcomes assessment committee).
In late April, I gave another instance of my song-and-dance for non-majors, the presentation that I like to call "Adventures in computing." In this case, it was part of "The College Project," in which we invite a group of talented high school students onto campus once a week throughout the spring, to interface with professors in different fields. The idea isn't explicitly to recruit them to LIU, but just to turn them on to higher education in general.
My presentation is just about 1.5 interactive hours (with props!) to convey a flavor of what computing is all about, and some of the "big ideas" that have come from it. Posted here are the slides and three handouts I used.
