I’m a Professor!
A rapidly escalating pandemic is a strange time to celebrate. But selfishly, I need things to ground me in the past and the future. In that self-serving spirit, I’m proud to announce that my promotion to Professor was recently approved by the University of Washington! 🎉 I don’t have a letter from my President to share yet, and it won’t be official until the Autumn of 2020. But I couldn’t wait to share.
But wait, wasn’t I already a professor? Not quite. Academia is full of strange traditions and one of those is giving people titles, and with those titles, power. In the United States, these titles are usually one of three: Assistant Professor (which means one is a new professor, and does not yet have tenure), Associate Professor (which often means one has been recognized as a capable researcher and teacher, and possibly has been granted tenure), and Professor (which is typically the highest rank one can achieve, signaled by the lack of qualifiers). All of these titles imply that the professor does combination of research, teaching, and service. (Of course, that’s just the United States. In Germany, academic ranks are even more complicated.)
So when I say that I’m a Professor, what this really means is that my colleagues at the University of Washington, and many of the researchers across the world who were asked to write confidential letters about me, view me as an internationally respected researcher, teacher, and contributor to academia. Given that this is one of the highest distinctions that the university gives—and one that is by no means guaranteed—I feel both grateful for the recognition and deeply humbled. Achieving this rank means not only upholding the meaning of this rank through my future work, but also bearing the responsibility of more power on campus and in the world, including the power to bestow the rank to others.
One part earning this rank that I found particularly rewarding was the opportunity to reflect on my leadership and impact. To do this, I prepared a promotion document, much like the one I prepared for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor back in 2013. However, unlike my tenure document, which largely focused on research, my full professor document was much broader in scope. I wrote about the entire history of my research record, the full breadth of my teaching, and the extensive and diverse service contributions I’ve made to the iSchool, the University of Washington, Washington state, the United States, and the world. It was quite fun to reflect on 20 years of research, teaching, and service, to try to make sense of what I’ve learned, and to get to share it with several confidential Professors around the world, many of whom are likely in my research communities.
To support others in writing similar documents, here are the research, teaching, service, and diversity statements and CV that I submitted for promotion to Professor:
- CV (28 pages)
- Statements (22 pages, including fun illustrations!)
And if you’re curious about how my statements evolved since tenure, here are the CV and statements I submitted for promotion to Associate Professor:
- CV (13 pages)
- Statements (9 pages, including very serious figures)
It’s clear from looking back on all four of these documents how my interests have evolved, how the scope of my ideas have expanded, and yet how the phenomena I investigate—people interacting with computer programs—has remained constant. There’s also a really clear shift in the scope and degree of responsibilities I’ve taken on, in research, teaching, and service.
Of course, no one is promoted to Professor without an immense amount of support. So below is an extensive list of people that have helped me in big and small ways to reach this stage of my career (with apologies to everyone I missed):
- Thank you to Margaret Burnett, my undergraduate research mentor, for recruiting me into research, teaching me the importance and pleasures of writing, and inspiring me to pursue a career in academia.
- Thank you to Brad Myers, my doctoral student advisor, for helping to develop my taste in research, giving me immense freedom in my research, and for celebrating my work and ideas.
- Thank you to all of my past and present doctoral students, Parmit Chilana, Michael Lee, Paul Li, Brian Burg, Casey Hickerson, Zak Dehlawi, Amanda Swearngin, Dastyni Loksa, Greg Nelson, Kyle Thayer, Benji Xie, Alannah Oleson, Yim Register, Neil Ryan, my postdoc Roshanak Zilouichian, and my many informal doctoral student advisees, including Kayur Patel, Kristen Shinohara, Rahul Banerjee, Saba Kawas, Stefania Druga, Matt Davidson, Annie Yan, Ada Kim, and Laura Vonesson. The energy, insight, and passion you have brought to every meeting, to every paper, and to every discovery is what keeps me inspired for academia’s future!
- Thank you to the 30 outstanding undergraduates who supported our research over the past 12 years, including those who went on to pursue research, Bryan Dosono, Harrison Kwik, and Andrew Hu.
- Thank you my amazing colleagues and collaborators at the University of Washington, including the entire iSchool faculty (but especially Jake Wobbrock, Batya Friedman, Mike Eisenburg, and Wanda Pratt for their mentorship), and in roughly random order, collaborators Julie Kientz, James Fogarty, James Landay, Mike Ernst, Jason Yip, Katie Davis, Richard Ladner, Jeff Heer, Katharina Reinecke, Jen Mankoff, Steve Tanimoto, Ras Bodik, Dan Grossman, René Just, Zach Tatlock, Emina Torlak, Gary Hsieh, Sean Munson, Charlotte Lee, Daniela Rosner, David McDonald, Min Li, Katie Headrick Taylor, Anne Beitlers, Niral Shah, and the late David Notkin.
- Thank you to my collaborators across the world, including Margaret Burnett (again!), Andy Begel, Thomas LaToza, Yann Riche, Tovi Grossman, Chris Scaffidi, Gregg Rothermel, Martin Erwig, Mary Shaw, Alan Blackwell, and many others.
- Thank you to the numerous mentors and collaborators across the computing education community, including research mentors Mark Guzdial, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Steve Cooper, Brian Dorn, Sally Fincher, Joanna Goode, Chris Hundhausen, Leo Porter, and Marian Petre, as well as numerous change makers, Shannon Thissen, Kevin Wang, Tammie Schrader, Ann Wright-Mockler, and Lauren Bricker.
- Thank you to my two wonderfully supportive Deans of the The Information School, Harry Bruce and Anind Dey.
- Thank you to the confidential Professors around the world who carefully read, evaluated, and wrote about my case last summer for your (highly redacted!) criticism, praise, and support.
- Thank you to my wife DeAnn, my ex-wife Kit, and my parents, Judy Jensen and Bob Ko, for always supporting my impractical curiosity and love of discovery.
- Thank you to my daughter Ellen for tolerating my intolerable curiosity, insatiable desire to argue, and refusal to answer any of her questions with anything but another question.
What am I going to do with this new rank? Take bigger risks, pursue bigger visions, and change the world, especially the way it understands computing and its role in society. You know, the same kind of megalomaniacal yet measured goals that drive all scholars :P But more seriously, with the power that comes with this rank, I mostly want to learn how to be responsible, just, and empowering. I’m just at the beginning of recognizing the impact of my words and actions, and how to use them wisely to help everyone I’m trying to lift up, whether it’s a junior colleague or someone just grasping how computing is oppressing or empowering them. Thank you for your patience and support while I learn.
