Marie desJardins receives award for inspiring women to pursue careers in computing, engineering and math

Sat, 02 Sep 2017 11:57:39 -0400
cwit, education, faculty-and-staff, news

Professor Marie desJardins was selected for the 2017 A. Richard Newton Educator ABIE Award by the Anita Borg Institute. The annual award recognizes an educator who has developed innovative teaching practices and approaches that attract girls and women to computing, engineering, and math. As part of the award Dr. desJardins will take part in a panel on efforts to increase women’s representation and success in technology at the 2017 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Orlando this October.

Increasing gender diversity in computing has become both a professional focus and personal commitment for desJardins over the course of her career. “It’s part of a broader equity issue — for everyone to be able to envision themselves as creators of technology, and for the future of technology to be created by a diverse community of scientists and engineers,” she says.

This summer, desJardins shared her passion for encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in computing with nearly 150 elementary and middle school girls who attend the Mind, Body, Coding camp at UMBC. “Seeing these young girls whose lives could be transformed by greater access to computing is incredibly inspiring,” she says. “It’s a big part of what gets me energized every day to do the work that I do, from supporting diversity in K-12 computing education to mentoring junior female faculty who will train the next generation of computer scientists.”

The award announcement cited Professor desJardins for her many accomplishments in education, research and support of and commitment to improving student diversity, access, and quality of computer science courses at the high school level.

“Marie is known on campus and throughout her professional community for her dedication to mentoring, diversity, outreach, and innovative educational practices. Marie was named one of UMBC’s 10 “Professors Not to Miss” in 2011, and is regularly sought out to give invited talks to student groups. In 2010, she was invited to be a CRA-W/CDC Distinguished Lecturer. She was also one of the inaugural Hrabowski Innovation Fellows, and with that award, helped to create the ACTIVE Center, a new classroom that supports pedagogical approaches that increase student engagement and active problem solving.

Marie has become known nationally for her support of and commitment to improving student diversity, access, and quality of computer science courses at the high school level, and has received multiple NSF awards to support her efforts in this area. She is the lead PI on the NSF-sponsored “CS Matters in Maryland” project, which is creating curriculum and training high school teachers to teach the new AP CS Principles course. She has built a statewide coalition to increase access to K-12 CS education, with a focus on inclusion and diversity. She is also the Maryland team leader for the Exploring Computing Education Pathways (ECEP) Alliance, an NSF-funded initiative that is coordinating state-level CS education efforts.

Marie is UMBC’s 2014-17 Presidential Teaching Professor and was a founding member of the Maryland chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association, for which she is currently the university liaison. Her research focuses on artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, planning and decision making, and multi-agent systems. She has published over 100 scientific papers on these topics, and was recently named one of the “Ten AI Researchers to Follow on Twitter” by TechRepublic and one of “14 Women in AI You Should Follow on Twitter” by craigconnects.

At UMBC, Marie has been PI or co-PI on over $6,000,000 of external research funding, including a prestigious NSF CAREER Award, and has graduated 11 Ph.D. students and 25 M.S. students. She is particularly well known on campus and in her professional community for her commitment to student mentoring. She has been involved with the AAAI/SIGART Doctoral Consortium for the last 16 years and has worked with 90 undergraduate researchers and high school student interns. She was awarded the 2014 NCWIT Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award and the 2016 CRA Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award in recognition of her commitment to undergraduate research.”