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 third
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!



TELL ME SOMETHING UNIQUE AND MEMORABLE ABOUT YOURSELF!

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.



WHAT COMMITMENTS WILL BE CONSUMING YOUR CYCLES THIS SEMESTER?

This semester I am only teaching CS 161, so I will be able to devote most of my time
to it---if you need help, please come see me! I also have a variety of other faculty
responsibilities and such though (which I'm probably dealing with if I'm not in the 
office).

I also have a 1-year-old daughter at home. She takes up pretty much all of my time 
and attention that isn't spent on classes.