1 November 1999

SCS Academic Programs Are Under Jeannette's "Wing" as New Associate Dean

Computer Science Professor Jeannette Wing has taken on much more than a title as the School of Computer Science's (SCS) first associate dean for academic affairs. In this new administrative position, Wing will oversee the school's academic offerings, which have exploded over the past five years. The historical Ph.D. program and highly successful undergraduate program now share the spotlight with doctoral offerings in human-computer interaction, language information and technologies, and robotics.

The doctoral and master's degree programs have become specialized in entertainment technology, human-computer interaction, knowledge discovery and data mining, language technologies, robotics and software engineering. In addition, SCS jointly offers master's degree programs in computational finance, electronic commerce, information networking and information technology with other colleges of the university.

"We've increased our educational offerings in response to enthusiastic demand," said SCS Dean Jim Morris. "By coordinating the programs, Jeannette will make them all stronger. She has great energy and enthusiasm, and a sense of the right way to do things." Morris said he expects Wing to expand "on the wonderful job she's done directing the Ph.D. program for the past three years, where she's improved the quality of courses and educational experiences of our students."

In her new role, Wing sees herself as a nurturer of students and coordinator of the academic responsibilities of the faculty who advise and teach. She said she wants to preserve the high quality of all programs, to ensure uniformity and consistency in their standards and structure, and to make things work more smoothly. "My first order of business is to determine the status of the programs," she said. "An important goal is to reduce redundancy and to offer courses that can serve different communities."

Wing will continue to oversee the computer science doctoral program, where she'ss drawn rave reviews from students for making the curriculum more flexible and for better preparing students to enter the job market. "Jeannette did a lot of work when she became head of the computer science doctoral program," said Andrej Bauer, a sixth-year Ph.D. student. "She sent out questionnaires, talked to people, discussed the changes she wanted to make and then made them. She'ss very thorough, very active and makes informed decisions. Once she identified the problems, she wasn't afraid to make changes."

Wing said options for graduating Ph.D. students have changed. For the first time ever in 1996, the statistics showed there was a new job category for students. Sixteen percent were employed by startup companies that year. Wing created a unique "emigration course" to prepare students for life after graduation. "I created the course to make sure our students are coming out better prepared to interact with the real world in terms of grooming, job interviewing, raising funds for research and professional ethics," she said. "We're also paying special attention to communication skills as different from research skills."

Wing established a Speaker's Club in response to feedback she received from companies, recruiters and faculty at other universities who said that when Carnegie Mellon students gave job talks, their research was excellent, but their presentation skills fell short. The Speaker's Club is composed of graduate students and faculty who work as a committee to determine if students can present their work as well as they do their research. Bauer said the speaking skill requirement makes students have to work "much harder." ,P> Rob DeLine, a recent graduate of the doctoral program who works for Microsoft Corporation, said, "Many busy professors in a similar position would simply wait for problems to arise before acting. Instead Jeannette actively looks for opportunities to make improvements. "When she felt the quality of the Ph.D. courses could be better, she began aggressively seeking student input and providing timely feedback to the instructors, which often led to mid-semester course improvements," he said.

"Jeannette has greatly improved the quality of our computer science doctoral program by focusing on the needs of the students," said Randy Bryant, head of the Computer Science Department. "She's initiated new programs, established uniform and consistent policies, and worked with individual students and faculty. Her unbounded energy and enthusiasm motivates us all to do a better job," Bryant said.

Wing grew up in New York in a family of academics. Her father is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Columbia University and was dean of engineering at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. Her brother is a biology professor. "Since I was four years old I wanted to teach," she said.

Wing attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned undergraduate and master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, and a doctor's degree in computer science. She began her career as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California before coming to Carnegie Mellon in 1985. She said she came to Carnegie Mellon for the research environment, but "had to look at an atlas to find Pittsburgh."

At Carnegie Mellon, Wing has conducted groundbreaking research in formal methods for software specification and verification. She works in distributed systems, programming languages and security. She also is working with experts at the Software Engineering Institute on survivable systems.

Slim and lithe with a cascade of long, black hair, Wing balances her academic life with ballet and karate. She performs in the Nutcracker Suite and other ballets with a local troupe and will continue to take dancing lessons at the Purnell Center. She is a second-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do, a traditional Korean martial art.

Fourteen years on the faculty have not dimmed Wing's enthusiasm for SCS and its research environment, despite the attraction of larger cities like New York. "I'm still in Pittsburgh because of Carnegie Mellon," Wing confessed. "It's been good to me. SCS has an incredible environment. The vibrancy, the range of research activity going on here is unbeatable. "There is a spirit of collaboration and friendliness here. We help each other out," she said.

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