Mark Guzdial


Mark Joseph Guzdial is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He was formerly a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the College of Computing and the GVU Center. He is best known for his research in the fields of computer science education and the learning sciences and internationally in the field of Information Technology. From 2001–2003, he was selected to be an ACM Distinguished Lecturer, and in 2007 he was appointed Vice-Chair of the ACM Education Board Council. He was the original developer of the CoWeb, one of the earliest wiki engines, which was implemented in Squeak and has been in use at institutions of higher education since 1998. He is the inventor of the Media Computation approach to learning introductory computing, which uses contextualized computing education to attract and retain students.

Education

Mark Guzdial was born in Michigan and attended Wayne State University for his undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science in 1984. He received a master's degree in 1986 in Computer Science and Engineering at Wayne State University. Guzdial went on to receive a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1993 in Computer Science and Education where he was advised by Elliot Soloway. His thesis created an environment for high school science learners to program multimedia demonstrations and physics simulations. After graduating from the University of Michigan, Guzdial accepted a position as an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing. In 2018, he became a full professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.

Research and teaching

Guzdial currently directs the Contextualized Support for Learning Lab, a team of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students who design and implement innovative technology for the goal of improving learning. Guzdial's research projects include Media Computation, an approach that emphasizes context in computer science education, using programming languages, lectures examples, and programming assignments from those contexts that students recognize as being authentic and relevant for computing.
His Media Computation course has been taught at Georgia Tech since 2003 and has shown increases in computing across underrepresented groups, including women and minorities. Guzdial's Media Computation curriculum is being used at universities across the country. He received a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2006 to pursue his “Using Media Computation to Attract and Retain Students in Computing” curriculum.
Guzdial is currently serving as Program Co-Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education 2008 Annual Symposium, the largest computing education conference in the world. Guzdial was Director of Undergraduate Programs until 2007. He is Lead Principal Investigator on Georgia Computes, a National Science Foundation Broadening Participation in Computing alliance focused on increasing the number and diversity of computing students in the state of Georgia. He has published dozens of scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and has given invited presentations at academic conferences such as SIGCSE and ICER. He is a member of numerous academic journals and professional societies, including IEEE, ACM, and AERA.

Publications

His publications include:
In 2010, Guzdial was awarded the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award "for contributions to computing education, through the Media Computation approach that they have created, supported, and disseminated, and its impact on broadening participation in computing." In 2012, he received the IEEE Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award "for outstanding and sustained excellence in computing education through innovative teaching, mentoring, inventive course development, and knowledge dissemination." In 2014, Guzdial was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to computing education, and broadening participation." In 2019, Guzdial was awarded the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education at the 50th SIGCSE Technical Symposium "in recognition of a significant contribution to computer science education".

Personal life

Guzdial was married to Barb Ericson in July 1985. They have three children, Matthew, Katherine, and Jennifer.