-by Ogeche Emechebe
“Computer science isn’t typically a required course in high school, but according to one Wisconsin professor, it’s one that’s necessary.
Dennis Brylow, associate professor of math, statistics and computer science at Marquette University, is working to double the amount of high schools that offer computer science courses in Wisconsin.
In 2013, Marquette University received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to promote computer science courses in Wisconsin high schools. The 3-year grant is intended to boost the number of computer science teachers in the state. Currently, less than 7 percent of Wisconsin high schools offer computer science courses.
“We came up with a three-pronged plan to try to increase the number of teachers and to permanently fix the pipeline that provides new teachers,” Brylow said. “We applied to the National Science Foundation and it took about three years of getting the proposal accepted, but it’s brought a million dollars to Wisconsin to essentially double the amount of computer science teachers in the state.”
Several groups came together to apply for the grant, including the computer science faculty at Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s computer science department, the Wisconsin chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association and advisers from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
The first part of the process is to get existing computer science teachers on board to teach an introductory course, calledExploring Computer Science. In summer 2014, professors from UCLA came to Milwaukee to teach the course to local teachers. Now that the teachers are trained, the goal is to have them train other teachers in the state to build a team of experts.
Exploring Computer Science, which also has an introductory course curriculum for students, has been implemented in 18 school districts across the state, including six public high schools in Milwaukee that have added computer science programs since the grant.
The course was first introduced at public schools last year. Brylow said so far the feedback has been positive and has inspired some students to pursue computer science further.
The second piece of the plan consists of easing the process for computer science teachers to receive their license. Getting certified is difficult, according to Brylow. According to one report from the Computer Science Teachers Association, the process is described as “confused, disparate, and sometimes absurd.”
UW-La Crosse and UW-Whitewater are the only universities left in the state that offer programs to get certified, after many universities began dropping the program in the 1990s.
“Whitewater has graduated three computer science teachers in the past five years and La Crosse has graduated zero in the past five years,” Brylow said. “So we identified that one of the problems is nobody knows how to teach this one critical course called the Computer Science Teaching Methods course.
“So the second prong of the grant was designing a modern version of this course using all the latest research and running initial versions of it this summer and next, and building it in a way that will be easy to adopt at other universities,” he said.
Also helping raise the level of expertise in local classrooms is the fact that Wisconsin is one of only two states (Arizona is the other) requiring that a computer science teacher be licensed or certified in computer science to teach the course. They are also the only states that have specific regulations on what a computer science teacher should know.
Andrew Kuemmel, a computer science teacher at West High School, was on the leadership team of the National Science Foundation grant. Kuemmel, who teaches Computer Science Principles, is working on creating an Advanced Placement version of the class, which is expected to roll out in the 2016-17 school year. West High School currently has three computer science classes and has offered its classes for around 30 years now.
“My students learn about how search engines work, how we process big data, and what is the impact of computing in society,” Kuemmel said.
Kuemmel said there’s been an increase in students taking computer science courses, with enrollment in such classes at about 200. All grade levels are able to sign up for it. “