“…I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.” – William Butler Yeats
This blog was created to provide an additional channel for sharing our thoughts, reflections, and ideas, as well as inspire dialogue and discussion as we shape the CCI story together. The name, Treading Softly comes from the last line of Yeats’ poem, "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” which educational reformer Sir Ken Robinson used in his 2014 TED Talk as a call for a thoughtful reexamination of education and a reminder that we are working with our students' dreams.
For the sake of our students’ dreams, we must think boldly and tread softly.
Computing Fast, Thinking Slow & Long Term
From the landing on Mars, to political deepfakes, exponential advances in computing are expanding our world and confounding our sense of reality. Progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence have swiftly outpaced expectations in terms of performance and potency....
In her essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Nov 6, 2019), Pamela Newkirk, from New York University, laments the failure of academia to diversify despite decades of declared commitment and considerable financial investment. This costly failure is another illustration of the non-intuitive nature of systemic problems. Our impulse is to address them using piecemeal solutions and...
Three themes symbolize the 20 year history and continued growth of the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI): Curiosity, Action, and Care. It is a triad of interrelated elements, each feeding and recreating the other two. Here, I want to focus on Curiosity.
Curiosity is at the origin of everything. All knowledge...
The College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) is celebrating 20 years of innovation in thinking, teaching, and engaging with the world. Twenty years ago, Chancellor James Woodward foresaw how computing was fundamentally transforming all key human enterprises: education, scientific inquiry and discovery, health care, communication, and transportation. This...
In Hidden Figures, four female African-American mathematicians and computer scientists used adding machines, pencils and slide rules to launch rockets into space. These remarkable women, known as “human computers,” were relegated to the background at NASA because of their race and gender. Each woman faced challenges and offenses while contributing to the success of space missions with...
In the game of being, competition is a sideshow.
Every day, we face seemingly exclusive choices. What do we value most? How do we prioritize? Shall we focus on excellent teaching or on excellent research? Do we emphasize competence or compassion? Do we invest in excellence or in equity? These choices are between values; the things that are most deeply enshrined in our identities; the...
We are not a business. We are a community of higher learning.
In recent years, it has become common to use business lingo and evaluate the concerns, activities, and outputs of higher education using corporate paradigms. These comparisons present a false equivalency, are generally lazy, and ignore the nuance of academia, which...
By the end of July, I will be wrapping up my first year at the helm of this great college, the College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte. I cannot feel more grateful or more enthusiastic about being here. I am in the right ship, with the best possible crew, and the wind is blowing at our backs.
Within UNC Charlotte, an Urban Research University, the College of Computing and...
The Alumni Gives Scholarship allows students to pursue their dreams and contribute to the technology community. This needs-based scholarship empowers students to overcome financial hurdles while pursuing their education goals and gives preference to underrepresented populations within the CCI student body.
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