WHERE DID YOU GROW UP? WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO UPS?

I grew up in Walnut Creek in the San Francisco Bay Area. I earned my 
undergraduate degree from Colorado College (in Colorado Springs... you 
can guess what state). I had a double major in Mathematics (with an 
emphasis on Computer Science, as my school didn't have an independent 
CS major then) and English. I spent a year running a computer lab in 
CC's Economics department, and then headed to graduate school in the 
Informatics department at the University of California Irvine. I earned 
my M.S. in Informatics studying crowdsourcing systems, and my Ph.D.
studying how games can support environmental education. This is my second
year with the Math/CS department here at University of Puget Sound.



HOW MUCH PROGRAMMING HAVE YOU DONE (& WHAT LANGUAGES)?

I began programming casually in high school: I wrote programs and games 
on my TI-86 Calculator, defined new areas and quests for a MUD (which is 
like a text-based World of Warcraft game), and experimented with HTML/CSS, 
Javascript, and eventually PHP and MySQL. In college I mostly studied Java, 
as well as learning some C and C++. But this gave me a foundation to pick 
up pretty much any language; in grad school I mostly wrote code in Ruby and 
Javascript (making online systems with Ruby on Rails), and I taught classes 
in Python. Many of my projects are online and linked from my webpage.



WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES AND INTERESTS?

My biggest hobby is probably gaming: I particularly enjoy playing tabletop 
RPGS (yes, like Dungeons and Dragons--I've been playing for years), and I 
try to keep up on the latest video games. A lot of my research interests 
focus how people develop games and on using games to help people learn. 

My other major hobby is film and film history: I'm a big film buff, especially 
of classic cinema from the 30s and 40s. I am also a huge Star Wars geek. Oh yeah, 
and I love building Lego models, some of which are displayed around my office. 
I like cats, and so love living in Tacoma near a zoo that frequently has baby 
tigers and leopards!



WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR TALENTS & SKILLS?

I am very well acquainted with all matters mathematical; I understand
equations both the simple and quadratical; about binomial theorem I am
teeming with a lot of news---with many cheerful facts about the square of
the hypotenuse! ...and yes, I can whistle all the airs from that infernal
nonsense Pinafore.

In addition to memorizing a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan, I'm very good at 
word-play, and enjoy making terrible puns. I played the French horn in 
orchestra for years and years, and so have a pretty good ear for rhythms 
and music... but I can't sing a note!



HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING REMARKABLE? HAS ANYTHING MEMORABLE HAPPENED TO YOU?

I wrote a paper in grad school that has been cited over 200 times in 3 years 
(that's a lot). As an undergraduate, I earned an award for my English thesis on 
narratology, and I was also named the "Most Promising Future Faculty" at UCI for
2012. I've also traveled a bit--for example, in high school my orchestra went on 
a 3-week Australian tour.



WHAT COMMITMENTS WILL BE CONSUMING YOUR CYCLES THIS SEMESTER?

This semester I'm teaching three classes: CS 161, CS 240 (Software Engineering), 
and CS 315 (Computer Graphics). Since this is my first time teaching some of these
classes, preparation and grading takes a lot of time. It's worth noting that each of 
these classes uses a different programming language, so I'm going to be doing a lot
of context swapping! My wife and I are also expecting our first child in February, 
so I will be getting ready for that as well.