Communications of the ACM
Jennifer Rexford Talks to ‘She Roars’ Podcast about Partnering with Google, Computer Science’s Revolution
Princeton University computer science professor Jennifer Rexford discusses the changes she has seen in computer science education over the last three decades.
Credit: Danielle Alio
Says Rexford: "A lot of work these days, even outside computer science, is not producing a single answer to a single question, but conceiving of a recipe for computing that answer in multiple circumstances. And so, [computational thinking] is as intellectually important as reading, writing and arithmetic … as integral to the modern university."
The computational revolution she describes is reflected at every level in the Princeton community. "Students are voting with their feet," says Rexford, the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering and professor of computer science. Computer science is now the most popular major "by a mile" and some 60% of all undergraduates take the computer science introductory course.
The world's top computer scientists and businesses seem to be voting with their feet, too. When Rexford joined Princeton's newly created computer science department in 2005, she had slightly more than a dozen peers. Today, it is home to approximately 47 tenure-track faculty, with 18 new hires in the last four years, alone.
Equally telling is the May 2 ribbon-cutting of Google's newest location in Palmer Square. It was established to facilitate the closest possible interactions with Princeton faculty and students. Rexford explains that Google isn't alone in its thinking. "A lot of companies are starting to be interested in locating near a university to get the advantage of connecting with faculty without having to poach them and to engage with the broader university community that can help them in recruiting top students, and in creating the ideas that maybe won't be in a product tomorrow, but maybe in one, two or 10 years from now."
Computer and data scientists come to Princeton for the internal strengths of the department, says Rexford, but also for the distinct attributes of the University, as a whole. "We're fortunate to have a small, intimate campus with uniform high quality across the board. And so, if you want to work with one of the best neuroscientists, or best people in genomics, or psychology, or math, or sociology, they're here, at Princeton."
From Princeton University
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