UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Shomir Wilson, affiliate professor within the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), obtained a Best Paper Award on the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, the annual convention of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), held Feb. 18–21 in St. Louis.
“SIGCSE is the largest and most widely recognized conference for computing education, bringing together researchers and educators from around the world, ” stated Wilson. “It’s a community that I’ve wanted to know better, and the paper enabled that.”
Wilson introduced on the convention and obtained the Best Paper Award for Position and Curricula Initiatives, which acknowledges a high paper that both makes a robust argument about a problem in computing schooling or presents a major curriculum or program innovation.
In “Rethinking How We Discuss the Guidance of Student Researchers in Computing,” Wilson observes that, within the context of student analysis, ideas like “adviser” and “mentor” typically lack clear that means.
“These concepts are sometimes narrowly defined, sometimes used interchangeably or sometimes used to include (or exclude) many interrelated activities,” Wilson stated. “This ambiguity gets in the way of understanding faculty obligations, and it can create harms by hiding conflicts of interest.”
Wilson used a aspect framework and a literature overview to determine six roles school play in guiding student researchers: adviser, mentor, supervisor, collaborator, coach and sponsor. He proposed “guidance” as an umbrella time period for these roles and confirmed that no single function absolutely helps college students and that tensions can come up amongst them.
“Although I published this paper in a computing conference, I hope it is useful beyond that scope,” Wilson stated. “I think the ideas can be broadly relevant to university faculty who work with student researchers at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.”
Wilson — who serves as coordinator of the information technology ethics and compliance bachelor’s degree program in IST’s Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics — stated he initially meant to share these concepts as a part of his advice series, which he created to assist college students, new school and others perceive “typically unwritten” customs and procedures in academia.
“This was a single-author manuscript based on an idea that I originally planned for an advice page on my website, but instead I decided to try for a publication,” he stated. “I didn’t know how it would be received. I’m glad I took the chance.”
Wilson additionally had a poster at SIGCSE, “The Hidden Curriculum of Faculty Careers in Computing.” The poster referenced the “Academia as a Career” part of his recommendation pages.