DINS Faculty Angela Stewart to Present at DINS Seminar Series, 11-9-22

The Department of Informatics and Networked Systems is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Angela Stewart will present at the DINS Seminar Series on November 9, 2022. The event, which will begin at 11:00 am, will be held in person (Room 316 in the IS Building) and a virtual (Zoom) option will be available as well. More details can be found on the DINS Seminar Series site. 

Dr. Stewart will discuss "Creating Critical Technologists: Shifting Computing Education towards Justice." 

Abstract:  Computing education largely focuses on equipping learners with technical competencies to be part of the future workforce. However, this approach has led to technologists who lack the skills to critically reflect on the ways technology might uphold systems of oppression. In this talk, I will discuss a reimagined vision for justice-oriented computing education. I will present findings from several design-based research studies in after-school computing education for girls. I will discuss how principles from these studies can make for more equitable computing education.

Angela joined the University of Pittsburgh in 2022, with a joint appointment in the School of Computing and Information and Learning Research and Development Center. Prior to that, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Boulder (2020) and a Bachelor of Software Engineering from Auburn University (2015). Angela conducts research at the intersection of the learning sciences, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. She uses multimodal data to understand students' social and cognitive states, particularly in collaborative STEM learning. She also creates equitable educational spaces by designing technologies that support the agency of students and teachers. Angela applies a culturally-responsive lens to her research, with a particular focus in emboldening Black girls' design of transformative technologies. Angela was named a 2021-2022 Emerging Scholar by the International Society of the Learning Sciences.