Nicki Washington is Unapologetically Dope

Nicki Washington is Unapologetically Dope
Jared O'Leary
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In this interview with Nicki Washington, we discuss the importance of cultural competency, expanding beyond “diversity” by focusing on creating inclusive and equitable environments, learning from people and scholarship outside of the field, lessons learned working with CS educators across the country, lessons learned while teaching during a pandemic, focusing on the humanity in computer science education, and much more. If you haven’t listened to it yet, check out the unpacking scholarship episode that unpacks one of Nicki’s papers.

  • Welcome back to another episode of the

    CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary

    in this week's episode i'm interviewing

    nikki washington

    in our discussion we discussed the

    importance of cultural competency

    which i discussed in the podcast episode

    that unpacked one of nikki's papers

    titled when twice as good isn't enough

    the case for cultural competence and

    computing

    so if you haven't listened to that

    episode yet i highly recommend listening

    to it either before

    or after this interview so you can have

    some more context on some of the topics

    we discuss

    we also discussed expanding beyond

    diversity by focusing on

    creating inclusive and equitable

    environments

    learning from people in scholarship

    outside of the field lessons learned

    working with

    cs educators across the country lessons

    learned while teaching during a pandemic

    focusing on the humanity and computer

    science education and

    so much more as always the description

    in the app that you're listening to this

    on should link directly to the show

    notes otherwise you can find them

    at jaredlery.com where there's nothing

    for sale and no advertisements

    there's just hundreds if not thousands

    of free resources that you could use

    potentially today

    in the show notes you'll find links to

    many of the publications and

    interviews that were mentioned in this

    episode as well as

    links to connecting with nikki online

    with that being said we're now going to

    start with an introduction by nikki

    good afternoon my name is nikki

    washington i'm a professor of practice

    in the computer science department at

    duke university

    born and raised in durham north carolina

    my background

    is computer science for all of my

    degrees

    i earned a bachelor's degree in computer

    science from johnson c smith university

    in charlotte north carolina

    in 2000 and then from there my master's

    in phd

    in computer science from north carolina

    state university in 2002 and 2005.

    so my career in computing has kind of

    been

    from college to grad school and then

    quickly

    into industry with the aerospace

    corporation for about one year

    post-graduation and then from there

    moved to howard university for nine

    years

    on faculty went through university for

    five years and now it do

    and can you tell me a story of how you

    got into computer science and cs

    education

    so i was exposed to computing at a very

    early age my mom

    was a math major and she spent her

    entire 34-year career at ibm as a

    programmer turned

    manager i was exposed to computing at a

    very early age

    due to her because of course ibm would

    have discounted

    computers and so my mom would every

    couple of years order a new one

    and allow me to install the software

    assemble it and then the more i did that

    as i aged

    i started to tinker around more and

    learn a little bit of programming

    a little bit more programming then

    turned into classes in high school

    and that was my introduction to

    computing but

    i originally planned to minor in

    computer science and major in something

    business related like marketing

    and so in my freshman programming course

    at johnson c smith my professor dr nagee

    batea realized that

    i was doing really well in the

    programming assignments in the labs and

    he asked me

    why is it that you are

    excelling in this in certain ways where

    other students are struggling

    i've been taking programming since high

    school so it's not new to me it was new

    to me to learn

    c but the concepts behind it weren't and

    he convinced me to

    change my major from marketing to

    computer science

    and consider minoring in marketing and

    his argument was

    this was 1996 at the time so he said by

    the time you graduate in 2000 computer

    science will be

    a really popular and needed area i think

    you'll do really well especially as a

    young black woman

    you'll have much more opportunities than

    you would in marketing

    so that kind of segued me into computing

    permanently

    yeah it's interesting how small

    conversations like that can be such a

    huge catalyst in somebody's lives and

    it's something that i try and

    take into account when i'm talking with

    somebody that i'm working with whether

    it's a kid or an adult or whatever

    it's amazing how it may have just been

    that one conversation

    just completely shifted your trajectory

    absolutely and

    i felt like there were a number of those

    that kept happening

    that was the first even my decision to

    pursue a phd

    i didn't want to but the president at

    the time dr dorothy cousin-yancey

    she wanted to nominate me for the david

    and lucille packard fellowship program

    which would be five years of funding to

    pursue

    a phd and when she called me

    to nominate me over fall break i told

    her yeah thank you but i really don't

    want to do a phd i think i may want to

    do a master's because

    i didn't know what i wanted to do but i

    knew i did not want to work

    and so as a college senior i just wasn't

    ready to go into the working world and

    get on that schedule

    but she told me you know i'm going to

    nominate you anyway

    this is too good of an opportunity to

    turn down so

    send me your resume and worst case

    scenario is you get it and you say no

    and so i took the chance and it worked

    out

    yeah i had similar experiences i hadn't

    even considered a phd i was just going

    to get a masters

    and i was taking a class and i was

    writing a paper on this topic and we're

    only supposed to

    cite like 10 sources or whatever i ended

    up citing like 30 or 40

    sources because i was just really

    interested in the topic and when i

    submitted the paper the professor's like

    you just basically did

    a chapter two of a dissertation on this

    topic have you thought about doing a phd

    and was like well i didn't even

    consider it and it's just funny how that

    little conversation it just completely

    shifted my trajectory in terms of where

    i went

    it's fun at least for me to reflect on

    like those various catalysts in life

    whether positive or negative so like i

    i shared with you on twitter like i have

    this calvin tattoo of like

    trying to play in the rain and like i've

    had moments in my life where like a car

    accident made it so that

    it was really bad in the moment but like

    made me focus more on education and it's

    funny how

    those little things completely shift

    best laid plans

    absolutely that's what i tell people you

    can plan all day and then life happens

    and you have to go with it

    you know it's funny because i grew up

    running track and it was that same thing

    that i had this idea that i was going to

    run track at a huge d1 school

    and all of these and then i played

    basketball in the winter

    to avoid having to practice outdoors for

    indoor and tour my acl

    in 11th grade and so that totally

    shifted like oh

    well there goes track so it was one of

    those situations where

    even the types of schools that i was

    interested in attending

    totally changed because before where i

    was looking at lsu or taxes

    or even carolina that totally shifted

    and so now

    i'm not worried about sports even like i

    just want to be somewhere where i can

    thrive and so all of my schools that i

    applied to as an undergrad were hbcus

    and even people told me some of my

    teachers told me well you need to go to

    a good school nicki and i kept saying

    well what is a good school and you're

    equating good to white and i don't want

    to attend a pwi

    i want to be somewhere where i can

    thrive and i don't have to fight every

    day yeah

    and for people who are listening and

    aren't familiar with it hbcu

    historically black college university

    and then pwa is primarily white

    institution so

    just in case people aren't familiar with

    the terminology now on that

    topic what i read on your website is

    that at some point you would realize

    that

    you're growing up as a black woman

    surrounded by black engineers was the

    exception and was not the norm

    and i'm wondering how that realization

    has kind of impacted

    your trajectory in csncs education yeah

    i think i did not realize it until

    i arrived at johnson c smith in my

    programming courses

    and i think because growing up in durham

    it's such

    a unique city especially at that time

    you know you're surrounded by

    duke north carolina central and durham

    tech and then you've got carolina right

    down the road

    nc state shaw and a ton of other schools

    as well

    and it had a rich history of black

    excellence in the haiti community and

    black wall street so

    for me it just kind of was commonplace

    to see

    representation of myself and always

    being told

    through my parents friends who also just

    happened to be the parents of my friends

    growing up

    that the only limit is you and whatever

    you start you finish

    you can be whatever you can do whatever

    but when i got to the university i

    realized everyone didn't have those

    experiences because they're coming from

    different parts of the country

    and different backgrounds even so they

    didn't have necessarily a lot of people

    in computing who may have been adults so

    they may not have had a lot of college

    graduates even in their environment

    but it was really important for me as i

    started navigating spaces even in

    graduate school

    that i tried to make sure that

    people coming behind me saw themselves

    in me so as a graduate student i would

    tutor

    at shaw insane og

    myself and another black graduate

    student in electrical and computer

    engineering

    and then even as i moved into

    working in industry at the aerospace

    corporation i was doing talks around

    graduate school

    and the importance of pursuing a phd or

    master's degree

    at howard in the college of engineering

    and it just so happened

    that one of these chance encounters

    again my closest friend

    in college is from dc and he was

    teaching at the time at his alma mater

    and so

    i went out to one of the high school

    football games and his cousin

    who was a faculty member dr clay

    gloucester at the time in electrical and

    computer engineering at howard said oh

    you graduated that's great i hadn't seen

    you in a couple of years and

    you want to teach a class at howard and

    i thought well that would be kind of

    cool

    okay and so it

    started as this idea of me being an

    adjunct professor

    but at the time a faculty member left

    and

    they were looking to fill that spot and

    they never had a black woman on faculty

    on the tenure track side at howard and

    so the incoming chair

    who was legane burge was in

    clay gloucester's ear saying ask her if

    she'd be willing to apply for the

    full-time position

    and so it kind of worked out again where

    i knew that there was something

    i really enjoyed the opportunity to

    speak

    to students and to be in front of them

    and encourage them and tell them these

    are the things that you need to do

    here's the blueprint for how i did it

    here's how you can too

    and i thought that that would be really

    important for students to see one

    especially when i realized that

    there was never a black woman in the

    department and then when i thought back

    on my experience

    even at an hbcu in the department i'd

    never

    seen a black faculty member as well so i

    never saw a black woman

    i never saw a black professor now we had

    other black faculty across the

    university because it was a black

    college

    but i knew that in a field like computer

    science it would be

    important especially for young men and

    women especially at howard of all places

    to see themselves

    in computer science especially to see a

    black woman so that was really the

    reason

    that pushed me into a career in academia

    and i think

    every space i've moved in every

    university since then i've tried to make

    sure that

    i'm always doing it because there's

    someone who looks like me who needs to

    see that

    they belong they're valued and that

    they don't have to do it the quote

    traditional way

    that everyone sends to tell them yeah

    it's amazing

    how there's a huge lack of diversity

    both

    in the k-12 context like 80 of teachers

    are white and then

    in the higher ed context as well so like

    i think all of my k-12 teachers were

    white

    in college i had one black professor who

    i worked with

    all four years he was a percussion

    person so like i got private lessons

    with him for all four years and was

    great

    and then i had a couple of professors

    who were navajo because there's

    a lot of navajo in arizona but other

    than that all white

    and it's amazing how that can have an

    impact in terms of

    basically implicitly saying these are

    the kinds of people who get these kinds

    of jobs and do these kind of

    things and that lack of representation

    can have a huge impact without even

    having to say anything about it

    absolutely i'm wondering if you could

    share the story that you shared with me

    about the paper that

    i unpacked a few weeks ago the when

    twice as good isn't

    enough yeah so like i said i started my

    career in academia at howard in 2006

    and i left in 2015 my dad died and so i

    took a position at winthrop for a number

    of reasons i thought that

    it would be a great fit for me in terms

    of doing css

    as well as bringing some initiatives to

    a state because i'd done some work with

    dc public school system and computer

    science then as well

    and i had a lot of challenges there over

    the five years

    at winthrop that i've shared very

    publicly in a lot of my talks and

    writing

    and one of the biggest challenges was

    moving

    into a space where now you're at a

    predominantly white institution

    you're at an institution in the south

    south carolina at that

    and having to deal with being

    expected to or being asked to

    change who you are in order to

    make people particularly students

    comfortable with your existence and

    presence

    there's a lot of work around and

    research around how

    course evaluations particularly impact

    the trajectories

    of women people of color and those with

    intersecting identities being

    women who are also of color and that

    came to light a lot for me where

    i was in situations where i would deal

    with a lot of biased student evaluations

    that on the qualitative feedback would

    talk about she's rude she's

    disrespectful she has

    no gratitude and having to have

    conversations with leadership about

    these are issues of bias versus being

    told oh nikki students complain about

    everybody

    and i would have to say but they're not

    saying that you don't have any gratitude

    they would never write these things

    about white men around here and so that

    paper was really born

    out of my frustration in 2019

    i applied in 2018 for promotion to full

    professor

    which at the university of course it

    goes assistant professor

    associate professor and then full

    professor which is the highest rank so

    my first application for promotion was

    denied in the spring of 2019.

    i got very limited feedback at the time

    and the feedback was that it was based

    on

    student evaluations that explicitly

    noted that quote

    students have complained that she's rude

    disrespectful and mean suggestion is to

    vary teaching strategies to account for

    different types of student dynamics

    and i said well i included an entire

    about five-page breakdown

    of you know the all of my student

    evaluations and showing that for every

    one

    negative feedback there were two

    positive that totally contradicted it

    including one student contradicting

    themselves who's the same person

    didn't matter and i was really

    frustrated and

    you know for all lack of better ways to

    put it i was super pissed

    and so i decided to find a way and i

    think it wasn't only that it was the

    conversation

    that followed regarding it where i was

    explicitly told

    that we need to find a way for students

    to like you

    and for students to improve your course

    evaluations i think you're a great

    professor but

    are the people that you can talk to

    about how to improve your teaching and i

    said i'm not going to do that

    i'm not going to reach out to anybody

    because this is not an issue about my

    teaching this is an issue of student

    bias

    that no one here wants to acknowledge

    and i told them you know if you're

    asking me

    to change who i am for the sake of being

    like for

    student evaluations then i'll tell you

    i'm not going to be here much longer

    that was the spring of 2019

    in talking with the new provost i was

    asked to apply again

    in 2019 2020 same thing happened but

    i wrote that paper over the spring and

    summer of 2019.

    my thought was this is not just

    happening to me

    i know it's not just happening to me

    because i have plenty of peers

    who are not only black they may be of

    other races and ethnicities but they are

    experiencing the exact same issues

    especially women they're being denied

    promotions

    they're being denied jobs even because

    that follows you when you have to apply

    for a new job

    in academia you have to submit all of

    your course evaluations

    and the same thing was happening even in

    industry so in 2018 i published the

    semester before

    unapologetically dope and i'm getting

    emails and calls from my former students

    a lot of them young women not all but

    former howard students who are saying

    you know i'm having these issues some of

    the same things

    and so my thing was why is this still

    happening

    this was happening to my mom throughout

    her career it's happening to me it's now

    happening to another generation of young

    women it will continue

    until we figure out how to stop focusing

    on

    issues of access and mentoring

    that people tend to think that students

    from marginalized groups need

    and start turning that attention to the

    students who are from the

    non-marginalized groups particularly

    white and asian by race and men

    by gender and if we do that then we'll

    start to fix these issues because we

    keep saying

    we need to provide access and resources

    for

    marginalized students and faculty but

    then we drop them into environments

    where they're still one of the few if

    not the only

    there's been no focus or work on the

    other people who don't identify

    as these groups and so they just

    continue what they're doing and

    we're all expected to just weather the

    storm and push through

    but we can't push through we see the

    numbers that are happening

    in silicon valley we see the numbers

    that are happening even in higher ed

    and so because of that i started looking

    at what is happening

    in social science and around that time

    i'd already started

    reading a number of books that were

    coming out and being released

    you know race after technology

    algorithms of oppression

    and then i started to look what are

    other places or fields doing

    that have to work with diverse groups of

    people

    so i looked first at education

    and healthcare and then they all led

    back to social work and this idea of

    cultural competence

    and honestly cultural competence was a

    term

    i never really remembered hearing in all

    of my education my nine years between

    undergrad to grad school and it

    definitely wasn't discussed at any point

    along the way in my career we've done a

    lot of work

    in culturally responsive pedagogy or

    curriculums and cultural relevance

    but nothing about cultural competence so

    as i started to study it more

    and read about it i kept saying why in

    the world are we not doing this

    in computer science this is the problem

    is that these other disciplines are

    making sure that every graduate comes

    out and they are able to engage with

    people from different identities and

    cultures

    in ways that ensure that the goal is met

    but that they are also respecting and

    understanding the differences that they

    share

    and being able to facilitate

    communication in a way that does not

    make that vulnerable population feel

    less than or minimized so why have we

    not done that here

    so that was really what it was born out

    of it was really my protest

    my frustration and my ability to say

    well if this is what you're gonna do

    then okay

    then this is my i'll show you and i'm

    just gonna take

    this bad batch of whatever it is i was

    given and turn it into something that's

    a win for me

    yeah i don't remember if this made the

    conversation or the

    cut for the podcast but when i

    interviewed joyce mccall

    she's a assistant professor in chicago

    and

    i've known her for several years and she

    mentioned all the same things that you

    were mentioning in terms

    of people just don't get it what it's

    like but she's fortunate in that she has

    adrian dixon

    as like a mentor in the college of

    education who has been there done that

    gotten tenure and like can help her

    navigate it and whatnot so it's very

    difficult when you are the only person

    in your institution or in your

    department

    and not have people to talk to about

    some of these issues and

    for people who are interested in it look

    up scholarship on discourse analysis

    and the way that people talk about

    different races or use different words

    in different contexts like the word

    urban

    in some context is associated with black

    with

    poor with like all these like negative

    connotations the way that people are

    phrasing them

    and then when they talk about suburban

    or rural then they're talking about it

    completely differently so

    it's a rabbit hole that i recommend

    listeners go down but i'm curious with

    your

    experiences with this and with your

    research interests and whatnot on like

    measuring

    and improving like historically

    disenfranchised groups like

    what have you learned through this

    process that people can do to try and

    help

    prevent some of this from happening i

    think there are a few things

    the first thing is to realize that

    everyone

    operates in a space of privilege the

    thing i think 2020

    is showing all of us is just how

    problematic we all

    are in certain ways especially when we

    are called on ourselves or our issues

    are presented to us

    it's very hard for people to talk about

    race i've seen that

    firsthand now it's usually people who

    are

    in non-marginalized positions so

    honestly that tends to be white folks

    for the

    better part where it becomes a very

    uncomfortable conversation and it's oh

    you know it's a lot of defensiveness but

    not recognizing that people like me

    have had to always talk about being

    black because we just don't have a

    choice

    people who identify as asian may have to

    do the same

    right people who identify as native also

    may have to do the same because

    otherwise our voices and our experiences

    will never be heard and respected

    and i think it's important to recognize

    that you have to be comfortable

    being uncomfortable there's a lot of

    desire to kind of get things over with

    quick and fast so we can move on

    and that's how we got to where we are in

    not just in society but also in the

    state of computing and we saw that with

    the black and the ivory twitter hashtag

    and shut down stem and even the most

    recent scholar strike right

    they're all of these things that have

    been happening because nobody wanted to

    talk about it

    the second thing is to decenter

    yourselves

    so i think that there's a lot of

    attempts even in the cs education space

    a lot of the people who have been doing

    the work who have been the most

    prevalent who have been the most

    prominent and received the most

    attention

    are again white men and women and the

    voices of the people who

    identify the same as the students tend

    to be

    the voices that are marginalized they

    don't get the exposure they don't get

    the opportunities and the access

    to a lot of these opportunities events

    conferences keynotes etc so it's not

    even about

    making space for individuals from

    different identities

    it's about giving up your space all

    together

    because a lot of times people say i'm

    gonna make space but i'm just gonna make

    just enough over here to let you sneak

    in but i'm still gonna take over

    majority of it and that doesn't serve

    any of us any good and i think also to

    stop operating

    from this deficit mindset of students

    from marginalized groups i remember

    vividly sitting

    it was either conference or some

    workshop and someone got up and said

    yeah we're doing stuff

    at my university for black kids and for

    rich kids

    and i just paused like excuse me what

    did i just hear

    and it's this like you said the

    discourse analysis and the words that

    are used to describe

    certain demographics of students how do

    you parallel black with rich

    and things that when people say for

    example you reference things as people

    of color

    but you're really talking about black

    people because you feel unsure about

    saying it

    i want you to call it out because i am

    not like every other person of color

    we're not a monolith even black people

    are not a monolith

    but if you're talking about black people

    say it you know one of the great things

    and i

    shout out dr tiffany williams because

    the article she wrote for communications

    of acm

    earlier this summer about calling people

    from systemically marginalized groups

    underrepresented minorities and the

    racism that's rooted in that it's so

    true because we see it but we've all

    used that language

    because that's what we were taught it

    was so ingrained in the

    terminology we saw every single day and

    even in my class i talked to students

    about the fact that every time you see

    anything around diversity or inclusion

    what is the language in terms of the

    target demographics and they'll say

    women

    underrepresented groups and then

    something else

    well what if i'm a black woman where do

    i fall into this spectrum

    when you're identifying and listing all

    of these people so there's no

    understanding even of intersectionality

    and how that plays

    an important piece so i'd say everybody

    needs to start thinking about those

    three things but

    also start to learn from the social

    sciences and the humanities

    and understand critical race theory i

    think it's you know absolutely absurd

    and disgusting to hear the rhetoric

    coming out at the

    federal level from the highest person in

    office right now

    about the divisiveness of critical race

    theory

    and it's just feeding this narrative

    that nothing

    is a problem here when we see every

    single day that it is for people who

    don't

    operate from a cisgender white

    heterosexual male identity

    yeah learning more about critical race

    theory and like the other

    sub points within that like double

    consciousness like when you were talking

    earlier

    in that discussion i was just like oh

    yeah that makes me think of the

    conversation with joyce where

    we unpack what is double consciousness

    in terms of like

    when joyce is in a group she also has to

    think of herself as black

    and view the perspective of a white

    person viewing her as black

    and like having those two different

    perspectives going on simultaneously

    like it's mentally draining having to

    consciously be aware of that all the

    time and it's something that i as a

    white individual don't have to think

    about and haven't had to worry about

    absolutely i'm curious when you've

    engaged with us kind of research and

    learning from like social work and

    things like that were there any

    surprises along the way

    that you were just hadn't anticipated

    the biggest surprise for me

    was that this wasn't being done

    anywhere that i could find right for a

    while gave me a lot of pause

    and i spent a lot of time just digging

    and digging which is why

    that 60 position paper had so many

    references because i kept going through

    a number of papers and avenues and

    looking and saying

    surely someone has been talking about

    this

    at an in-depth level in terms of what

    needs to be taught in computing

    departments

    the first paper i'd seen outside of that

    that was discussing anything around

    these topics

    was paper that just won sig kai's

    best paper award that was looking at hci

    and critical race theory and hci by a

    group of black women authors and i think

    the overall majority of them

    are grad students even but aside from

    that it shocked me

    and it shocked me so much because as i

    read algorithms of oppression

    and race after technology everything

    that they're talking about it's just

    like they're discussing everything we do

    in this field and everything we teach

    our students so

    why are we not even teaching this and

    the more i started to take

    little bits and plug it into for example

    i've always been on the front end

    of the undergraduate experience so i

    would teach

    the intro to programming or data

    structure something around that

    i would ask my students you know have

    you ever thought about

    how different algorithms affect people

    differently

    and they were floored when i would tell

    them that facial recognition technology

    doesn't recognize darker skin tones

    they've never even

    thought about that especially for

    students in south carolina

    to start understanding that and start

    looking

    and being hungry for more information

    was really impactful but it was also

    disheartening because

    it says what are we not doing and how

    are we failing students across the board

    and across the country

    yeah this is a topic that should be in

    cs education programs but it's not like

    you mentioned with the facial

    recognition technology i read a paper

    that like early uses a facial

    recognition technology

    the percentages of success rates were

    flipped between a light and a dark

    skinned

    so it was like 90 success with a white

    person and then with a black person was

    like 90

    failure rate and so i did a presentation

    recently on

    engineered inequalities and one of the

    things that i gave as an example is

    a video showing a white person putting

    their hand under a soap dispenser and

    then a black person does the same thing

    it won't dispense the soap

    so like whether it's in the algorithm or

    in the physical devices that we're

    creating

    like these are things that we need to

    talk about and we're not which is why i

    was glad to see it in your paper

    but it's also like well why did that

    just come out in 2020 why haven't we

    been talking about this for decades

    yeah there are black women even in the

    computing space who have been doing this

    research around bias and artificial

    intelligence so

    joy boulevaini timnit gibrou abba

    and deb rajni but they are in the

    ai space and so if you're not moving

    into that space of research

    then they don't get the exposure to the

    introduction to programming students the

    way they should

    every student in computing should know

    those four women's names

    because they are so critical in

    everything that's been happening not

    just over the last few months with a lot

    of technologies being sunset

    by places like amazon and ibm but also

    just over the last few years because of

    the

    work they've been doing in this space

    and the pushback that they

    received but i think that it was

    bothersome because

    it also spoke to nobody's willing to

    dig deeper right even when i had the

    idea for this class at first

    you know i pitched it and i got the idea

    well we already have an ethics course so

    how is this different

    and i just kept saying well a

    medical doctor can be ethical and still

    lack bedside manner

    it's not about ethics it's about all of

    these

    other things that you all purport to

    really

    support and really want to encourage and

    foster these inclusive environments

    but is it really what you want or is it

    just lip service because it's checking

    the box and it sounds good if i have to

    sit here and

    argue with you about cultural competence

    does not equal ethics

    then that says to me there's already a

    bigger problem and that you

    lack one of these for sure yeah and then

    on the other end of the spectrum if you

    get a course like that where

    you are talking about these things that

    now needs to bleed out into all of the

    other courses so if you're doing an

    assignment like one of the things that

    a professor did that i really liked was

    for education majors

    they would randomly assign this fake iep

    that a student had to prepare for so

    you're going to create a lesson

    and you have to think okay at least one

    of your kids is on the autism spectrum

    or at least one of the kids only has one

    arm or etc etc so like

    just different things to consider when

    designing lesson plans and whatnot and i

    think something like that

    can easily be incorporated into an

    assignment like okay you're all assigned

    into these different groups

    your software or hardware needs to

    take into account these different design

    considerations and whatnot so

    it's an easy way to actually apply the

    understandings outside of the class

    right and it's easy to dump even

    culturally competent modules into every

    single current computing course without

    creating a course

    right and that's what was so flooring

    like how is this

    not being done how are people just so

    unwilling to

    even see and the more that things have

    happened over 2020

    i'm not sure if i still believe it's a

    lack of willingness

    i think there was a lot of that in place

    but i think that for

    the other subset of people it was a lack

    of knowledge

    and understanding and wanting to learn

    but not having the requisite skill set

    to teach it

    do you have any recommendations for

    either k-12

    or higher ed cs educators about how to

    improve diversity equity inclusion

    i would say like i tell people all the

    time on twitter listen to black women

    and believe them you know we tend to be

    those canaries in the coal mine

    and people always listen to us a little

    too late

    i would say also taking away the

    idea of focusing on numbers right

    there's so much emphasis on we want to

    get x number of students from this

    demographic

    and we want to make sure that we have x

    number of women x number of black

    latina natives that's not representative

    of

    a good measurement because you can get

    numbers but how many people are you

    gonna keep

    and there's a difference between getting

    them in the door and keeping them there

    and people don't understand or

    appreciate the importance of being

    seen i say that all the time like i want

    you to

    not just recognize that i'm here but see

    my experiences

    and understand that i move in spaces

    differently

    than other people i have to you know

    like you said with double consciousness

    i operate always thinking about a white

    gay

    sometimes more than others but i need

    you to understand that that's a reality

    for your students

    and also recognizing that your students

    come

    with a lot of different experiences

    right now covet is showing that a lot of

    times and it's heartbreaking to hear

    some of the stories like

    the young kid who just got suspended for

    having a nerf gun

    in his zoom background and the teacher

    called the cops it's those kinds of

    issues that are flooring when you think

    about

    people right now educators especially

    tout this idea of diversity and

    inclusion and equity but then when

    something like that happens

    they're quick to do exactly what they've

    always done which is pick up a phone

    and call the police instead of trying to

    stop for a minute and process

    and recognizing that diversity does not

    mean you have an inclusive or an

    equitable environment it just means that

    you've dumped a bunch of different

    people from different

    identities into one pool it does not

    mean that

    it's an inclusive environment that it's

    not a toxic environment

    or that they came there from equitable

    situations or

    you made it equitable get away from

    diversity i tell everyone stop

    using that word just focus on creating

    inclusive

    and equitable environments if you do

    that the diversity will automatically

    come

    because it's something like i heard

    before where you know diversity is being

    invited to the party

    but inclusion is being asked to dance

    and actually take up space until we do

    that we're kind of just all

    chasing windmills yeah i like that and i

    think

    your points especially about the

    questions that are being asked in terms

    of like the numbers that people focus on

    with the demographics like

    so i myself identify as non-binary and

    that is not

    in most demographics like it's not an

    even an option to check it's either male

    or female

    and sometimes there's another option the

    kinds of questions you're asking and the

    numbers that you're collecting

    aren't representative of it but then we

    actually go like you mentioned earlier

    with intersectionality it's not just the

    fact that i have these identities that

    are

    labeled as silos like it's how they

    interact with each other and whatnot

    that for me

    is extremely important as an individual

    and i think it's

    really important especially for k-12

    educators

    even more so to start looking at some of

    these

    authors some of these social sciences

    humanities people

    who have written some amazing work

    around this space right

    and i use myself as an example because

    one of the earlier assessments that i

    was working on

    i used under the gender category male

    female other

    and i talk about that all the time

    because i say when i look at it now i

    cringe because it was something

    i didn't even think about but i was

    moving in a space of privilege again

    thinking about how someone who does not

    identify as male or female

    would feel by having to check other and

    that other ring that you create

    when you're trying to assess things or

    just engage with people

    so you have to learn to be very

    intentional about every single piece and

    recognize that again we all move in

    spaces of privilege

    when people ask me what can i read even

    i tell them start with something like

    sister outsider by audrey lord audre

    lorde

    she's amazing in her writing about

    all of her the facets of her identity of

    being a black queer woman

    and having to deal with these issues of

    age

    race class gender and sexuality and how

    they all

    overlap and intersect and how pivotal

    they all

    are to who she is and her experiences

    navigating in the world i think it would

    give

    so many educators a better understanding

    of all of the layers that their students

    bring to the table when they show up

    either in zoom or if it's back in the

    classroom or anywhere else and not only

    that like i said

    people don't understand enough how the

    experiences of

    their students who have certain

    identities are identical to their

    colleagues

    if your students are having issues then

    your colleagues are as well the

    difference

    is that your colleagues probably are not

    going to share it as much because

    you know there's issues like you said

    before promotion hiring

    just concerns about bias and

    discrimination from a number of

    different angles be it based on race

    sexuality gender but being able to

    understand

    put yourself in the perspective of

    someone else

    and understand fully how would you want

    to be

    seen and how would you want others to

    see you and then

    move in that way that you are always

    making sure that

    whoever's in front of you even if

    they're not in front of you they are

    still

    seen in the conversations and the work

    you do because

    they know that in the back of your mind

    you're always thinking about

    outside of yourself that's really hard

    for people to do but you have to be

    very intentional about it like thinking

    of that broader perspective

    outside of what you're doing i'm

    wondering what are some things that

    you've learned

    broadly speaking from your experiences

    like you said you've worked with dc

    public schools you also helped

    write the k12 cs standards for south

    carolina you're also one of the lead

    writers for the k12 cs framework

    so like thinking about those broad

    things like the frameworks and the

    standards

    how those impact people what have you

    learned from those experiences

    i think the biggest things i learned

    were in the development process

    and the convening of people from all of

    these different backgrounds so it wasn't

    just for example faculty k-12 educators

    there were people who were

    non-profits or in the government sector

    and then there were all of these other

    people who may have been

    just part of feedback or contributing in

    other ways outside of writing

    the biggest thing i learned is that not

    everybody in cs education gets it

    right everybody thinks they do but they

    don't and that was very telling because

    some of the conversations you know

    became some of those

    good intentions that just are terrible

    ideas

    i think the other piece was recognizing

    that there is such a difference in the

    experience of a student

    not just based on their identities but

    based on where they are geographically

    across the country

    so you know i spent 10 years

    in dc nine of those years at howard

    and while dc is

    a diverse city dc still has it still

    runs the spectrum

    in terms of class and income levels and

    so

    we actually for a full academic year

    myself my department chair lee burge

    and four students taught a full computer

    science course at the

    middle school that howard has on campus

    the middle school of math and science

    and because it was a charter school they

    came from all across

    dc but they were all black

    and latinx students the entire 300

    student population but you got to see

    all of these students from different

    backgrounds

    and all the students had access to

    technology and they had access

    through the school itself as part of

    being at that school you had access to

    technology at the school but then you

    also got a laptop at home

    when i relocate and now i'm working on

    the k12 standards in south carolina

    there were a lot of conversations from

    k-12

    educators and district leaders that were

    saying

    these standards we're developing are

    great but we still struggle with

    a lot of students with basic digital

    literacy

    and so in addition to creating the

    standards

    we also had to create a k-8 digital

    literacy standards to ensure

    that students had proper access and

    understanding of just how to use

    technology

    before we can start to get into the

    computer science aspects and then there

    were the issues again of access because

    depending on where you are

    does your school district even have

    enough computers to serve as a lab for a

    classroom

    in order to roll this out right there

    was the goal of that these standards are

    across the state and every school will

    have to teach these courses

    but how does that look in a school

    that's severely underfunded right now

    so i think that was the biggest

    eye-opening experience

    for me is that these standards

    that are developed they're great but

    there's still a lot of work to be done

    just to be able to

    even implement them properly and that's

    still a lot of work

    even now that you know covet exacerbated

    that and brought it to light

    but even still there are issues with

    that you know there's students who have

    to go to

    a mcdonald's or somewhere a public

    resource to sit in their car in order

    that

    to have school all day yeah and the

    issues of like what kinds of devices do

    teachers and students have access to

    like what you can do with an ipad

    is different from a chromebook which is

    different from a laptop or a desktop

    and then do you have access to it at

    home cool if you have access to at home

    do you actually have internet okay if

    you have internet how many people are

    using it at the same time so like larger

    families

    it's a lot harder for them to all be on

    a zoom call at the same time

    etc etc is such a huge problem and it's

    something that has

    certainly been exacerbated with kovid

    you had mentioned that like

    not everyone gets it one of the

    questions that i like to think through

    for myself is what do i not get right

    now that i'm gonna look back

    on like five years from now and go wow

    i'm doing that completely differently

    now and i'm glad i am and

    one of the things i like to think about

    is like in my teaching when i first

    started teaching i used to think

    x but now i think why and what has

    changed

    i'm curious do you have any examples of

    like when i first started teaching i

    used to think this but now i think

    something completely different

    so full disclaimer when i started

    teaching i was 28

    it was my very first time teaching ever

    i didn't have any experience with office

    hours anything i think my advisor asked

    me

    to proctor an exam one time and that was

    it so

    for me it was totally fish out of water

    context luckily my dad was a k-12

    educator turned administrator so he kind

    of coached me through a lot of things

    i think i entered the university

    making sure i operated in a space of

    what worked for me

    in terms of how did i best

    receive information and not only that i

    think i operated also in a space of

    making sure because i was so

    young and i looked so much like the

    students that i was

    trying to make sure there was a line of

    delineation where

    i'm not a peer i'm a professor and i

    think i needed that

    but i think i also started to realize

    that

    how i didn't need certain things in

    learning

    not only because of my exposure

    to the concepts at the time but i think

    also because

    i'd had so much opportunity

    over my younger years to participate in

    things that were focused around critical

    thinking and logic so

    a lot of things i just took for granted

    and the more that i progressed

    i realized that i need to make this make

    sense

    as much as possible to any student who's

    coming in with

    zero knowledge and let me make the

    assumption that a student's coming in

    because of course in those intro courses

    for computing majors we're all told

    you should if you don't have any

    experience in programming then you

    should at least have already taken

    calculus or be taking calculus well

    there's going to be a lot of students

    that i learned

    especially in my first early years that

    have not taken calculus they may show up

    and they may be

    taking precal at the university so

    calculus is going to be maybe the next

    semester or the next year down the road

    but that doesn't mean that again they're

    operating in a deficit

    it just means that whatever their

    trajectory was it didn't get them the

    calculus before they graduated

    so you don't need calculus to be a

    critical thinker

    or to have computational thinking so for

    me it was always about

    how do i make this make sense in a way

    that any student

    could grasp this without feeling like

    i'm slowing the class down for those who

    may be a little bit more ahead

    but also that i'm not moving too fast

    for those who may not be following this

    as easy and i also started to learn

    ways to help other students who may be

    struggling

    navigate and figure out what they're

    doing wrong so for me it was always well

    you just gotta practice

    i was an athlete and so for me it was

    always if you practice you're training

    your mind your mind's a muscle so

    you know just keep doing it and that

    would work for me a lot of times in grad

    school i would just drill something in

    my head and look at it until it just

    clicked

    and it made sense everyone doesn't

    operate in that space and so

    i had to learn how to

    bring it home to students in ways that

    were extremely visual especially in a

    programming class and that's

    hard to do when you're trying to teach

    basic concepts

    and you've never taught before but it

    helped me learn how to

    make things make sense without having to

    be in front of a computer and not having

    a compiler

    and everything i took it and applied it

    to all of my lessons where i tell

    students

    start with the picture if i give you a

    problem draw it i don't want to see any

    code just draw it out in a way that

    makes it make sense and start

    building it from there and i think that

    that's helped a lot for me

    i mean it's helped a lot for students

    because then they stop

    and they don't think about let me sit

    down and start typing something

    and one of the other things i would

    start to do is i learned how to glean

    certain pieces of information that were

    actual

    constructive criticism from course

    evaluations

    i tell a lot of people especially junior

    faculty

    don't take course of vows to heart

    because

    you know you've got the subset of

    students who did well and they don't

    care they're not going to submit an

    evaluation because they're done

    but there's also a subset who are mad at

    you about something and they're going to

    use that to

    lash out so you can't don't look at that

    don't look at rate my professor

    nothing every now and then there's

    something that makes sense like oh i

    wish you'd slowed down i just focused a

    little bit in on this

    and that was helpful so what i would

    start to do even

    now is check in with students and it was

    really important over the last

    several semesters and even with kobe

    because it became a thing of

    my dad would tell me this all the time

    is that the students don't care what you

    know till they know you care

    right and so and i would just tell them

    like look

    when kobe hit in march i was already

    struggling mentally i was just

    over everything at everybody anyway but

    when that hit

    i just shut down and so i emailed my

    students and i said look

    we are going to figure out how to get

    through this together i am overwhelmed

    i'm sure you all

    are so we're going to do what we need to

    do to get through this

    and the students i found were so

    appreciative of that and i changed all

    of the assignments to make sure that

    it wasn't overburdening them it wasn't

    monotonous it wasn't

    something that was just you know

    checking a box to make sure we

    covered x y and z like and it gave me an

    opportunity to learn about

    them i learned that you know some of

    these students were picking up jobs to

    try to make sure they helped their

    family for someone who lost income

    or you know they're back home and

    they're overwhelmed because they have

    a younger sibling that they're now

    trying to help get through the school

    day because their parents are working

    and they're trying to navigate their

    learning plus their younger siblings so

    just having that ability to extend the

    humanity part of it and

    again i think that that's not what we're

    taught in computer science we're

    taught you know nobody cares about your

    feelings this is what it is we operate

    in facts

    but you have to move in this space of

    feelings

    and humanity because life happens

    and if we don't again we continue to see

    these same situations and these are

    students who you could quickly lose

    because they start to feel further

    marginalized

    yep right it's not like oh i'm falling

    behind my professor knows this

    and she's telling me look let's figure

    out a schedule how can you get this in

    how can we make this work

    or you know she's making it so that it's

    asynchronous so that i don't have to

    worry about sitting in front of a

    computer exactly the same time that my

    sibling is

    yeah i like that i like the idea of like

    the multi-perspective

    approach to teaching thinking of

    different ways to teach things and then

    to approach it from a point of

    compassion

    i'm curious how do you do that in

    larger class sizes so like in the

    elementary space my class sizes were up

    to 35

    kids which that's manageable but i saw a

    few hundred

    a week because i had several different

    classes and whatnot so whether it's

    that kind of a context or you're

    teaching like a lecture with like 300

    people

    how do you include all these different

    perspectives and like try and be

    compassionate with students

    so it's funny you ask that because that

    was the question that was

    asked during my interview at duke

    and i was like yeah what's your biggest

    class size and i said oh there's about

    largest is about 400.

    it's interesting because i think you

    have to assemble a great team right

    and i'm going to say it in two spaces

    the first is where you have the ability

    to assemble a team of other people who

    can assist

    right so tas teaching assistants

    any other graders whatever it is

    understanding that that team is

    operating from that same mindset like we

    all understand that

    this can be a lot for us so we need to

    remember it's a lot for the students we

    need to move accordingly

    we need to make sure that we are

    attentive

    to any flags or things that may be

    concerning about a certain set of

    students or one or two students

    but if you're in a space where you don't

    have the resources of a ta

    or any assistance i found that the

    ability to

    just collect the information a lot of

    times is helpful

    even if it's a simple google form or a

    qualtrics form and it just asks an

    open-ended question how are you doing

    you know just

    somebody asking how you're doing and

    then students can submit

    and then you can review it and start to

    itemize like who needs more attention

    right now who's going through something

    right now that i need to pay attention

    to or flag

    you know for me it became overwhelming

    even when my classes were about 30 or 40

    because i may have been teaching

    you know like you said over the course

    of like 150 students across four classes

    and it's just me and so the easiest way

    for me a lot of times was just to

    create those forms and let students dump

    and it may be

    you know every every so often like i

    just throw it out there

    every month or every couple of weeks

    like what's going on

    that's going to be critical especially

    as we move

    forward post 2020 because

    we have to rethink how we do

    everything and how we engage with

    students

    i think that we have to rethink

    not just how we engage with them but how

    we teach them and how we engage with

    them should

    influence and impact how we teach them

    it's easy when you're in front of a

    classroom

    and you're on a board and you're writing

    something and you turn around okay

    any questions any comments any concerns

    you know you'll get one or two

    and then boom you're back to what you're

    doing but now in the age of zoom

    it doesn't work the same and there's so

    many other things that are going on

    in a student's mind and even in their

    background right you know we still have

    arguments about why people are forcing

    students to turn on

    their videos no matter what the course

    size

    is i think you just have to take the

    time to be intentional and there are

    ways to do that

    that can make it as least stressful as

    possible and strenuous as possible for

    you

    which is why i say a lot of times that's

    where the beauty of technology comes

    into place because you can automate that

    send it out

    but then you can filter that information

    pretty quickly

    and start to review that and look at how

    can i reach those students who need me

    the most

    but then still also let every other

    student know hey i see you

    yeah and speaking of like the making it

    as least stressful for you i'm curious

    because education and like being

    professor like there's a high burnout

    rate like there's

    the job never ends there's always

    something else to learn or to do and

    i'm wondering how do you personally

    nurture your mind body spirit

    good question i have actually thought

    about this this summer

    i think this was the first summer that i

    had zero time to decompress so i never

    in 15 years of teaching

    ever done summer school or anything so

    my summer was always my time to kind of

    just

    do whatever for three months and then

    everything with covet packing moving

    transitioning to

    a new job and creating a new course and

    so

    i am kind of five minutes

    and maybe one more class lecture away

    from a full

    meltdown but i say for me

    exercise so i walk unfortunately i can't

    run anymore due to knee injuries but

    i try to walk not as much as i should so

    i have to get back on a routine but

    that's always very helpful for me

    music is a huge source of

    zen for me i love music and honestly

    tv i'm a huge tv junkie so tv shows and

    music

    and podcasts are kind of getting me

    through all of this

    especially tv and music more so than

    anything

    so anyone who sees me on twitter i'm

    always tweeting about whatever i'm

    watching whatever i'm listening to that

    gives me

    life right now you know i have to

    definitely appreciate things like the

    versus series that started over covid

    because it gives me a chance to just

    remember when and be nostalgic about

    music that i enjoy

    tv shows like right now i'm watching

    lovecraft country and i'm so

    caught up in that and then even you know

    before watchmen or i watch a lot of old

    shows too so i'm either alternating

    between

    martin king of queens and golden girls

    and then during the day i wake up and

    it's living single

    girlfriends and in the heat of the night

    i'm all over the place

    and i tell people i'm high key using

    twitter kind of as my own therapy

    right now so you know i may be talking

    about something real serious

    at one o'clock but by nine o'clock i'm

    talking about something on tv

    or something that's popping up and it's

    hard because i

    feel like i'm an extroverted introvert

    so i like to be by myself but at the

    same time i like to do it on my

    terms so for me being an only child you

    know i could be very comfortable being

    home so the first couple of months

    or first couple of weeks in march oh it

    was great i guess just another weekend

    for me

    but then by april 1st it was okay you

    know i've had enough of this

    i need to see people and engage and you

    know here it is we're

    what it's september and we're still not

    outside yet so i've had to really find

    ways to step away from technology and

    just

    veg out and for me that's just been

    exercise music tv because there's really

    not much else you can do yet or we

    should be doing

    there's a lot that some people are doing

    but yeah i'm home

    are you listening to music or you're

    also creating the music i

    well no i'm not creating music i'm just

    a karaoke performer i'm not an

    actual singer yeah i'd say

    listening to music that's it and then

    shower singing

    yeah my wife and i are both

    percussionists and there's something

    about just like

    hitting a drum that's also very relaxing

    it's therapeutic to just like

    go put on some music i have this like

    funk playlist that i listen to

    and i'll just go on drums and just like

    jam out and i just like come away from

    that just feeling so

    relaxed and whatnot it's just i don't

    know it's nice so if you have the

    opportunity i recommend

    making the music as well but listening

    to it's also wonderful

    i don't think my mom would appreciate a

    drum set right now until i got my own

    place but yeah

    yes good point my parents speaking from

    like a point of privilege

    one of the privileges that i have had is

    my parents put up with the fact that i'd

    make music for several hours a day

    every day of the week and the fact that

    like it was percussion

    so i'd be banging a drum in my room or

    playing a marimba

    and several hours a day the fact that

    they didn't kick me out of the house for

    that

    oh my gosh yeah i can imagine i used to

    play piano when i was younger i stopped

    after about three years

    but my parents it would be the same

    thing i just kind of be banging away

    and sometimes i do miss it because it

    was good therapy you know like you said

    just to sit there and be able to just

    tap something or do something i'm

    curious what do you wish there was more

    research on

    that could inform like your practices or

    inform the field as a whole

    i don't even know if this is feasible

    but i think that

    more research around something related

    to faculty

    specifically faculty beliefs

    faculty engagement and certain activity

    i think

    something outside of just the

    quantitative how many students

    who identify as x have you mentored

    but actually getting to the root of some

    things around

    why are you in academia why are you in

    computing

    in academia what has shaped your

    experiences

    and your beliefs to date and that's

    something that i don't think a lot of

    faculty would necessarily be honest

    about

    unless it was highly anonymous but i

    think that it would start

    to give better clarity and context to

    some of the issues that we see in higher

    education

    being able to ask those questions that

    are not directly related to things

    around

    race or sexuality or religious

    affiliation but things that if they're

    asked the right way you could glean that

    information and extract it in a way that

    you could now start to see the why

    and start to better understand how to

    engage those specific faculty right

    i want to believe and i'm a cautious

    optimistic

    i want to believe that most faculty want

    every student to succeed in their class

    i don't believe that that's the case

    though

    and i think that if we could start to

    get to the why that is then we could

    start to fix a lot of the issues

    that are happening for our students yeah

    i know

    of some instances especially in some of

    the quote harder sciences

    there are a lot of professors who are

    there for the research and they

    begrudgingly

    are teaching classes to undergrads or

    graduate students

    and so they put very little effort into

    that and i'm grateful when universities

    have like professors of practice who

    focus specifically on

    teaching and teaching very well and not

    just doing the research and teaching on

    the side kind of a thing

    but it's tricky because like you have

    these universities where you're paying a

    lot of money to learn from somebody

    who's really good at what they do

    but they don't necessarily want to teach

    those courses at all

    and don't necessarily want to t every

    kind of student

    like i said before you have to come in

    exactly how

    they were as a college student and

    that's all they see

    and they don't know how to separate

    their experience at whatever age they

    are now

    because a lot of them are over the age

    of 50

    to gen z's and millennials who

    are growing up in a world where they

    never didn't know

    a google but they never didn't have a

    smartphone

    there's all of these dynamics that are

    at play

    that have nothing to do with race or

    gender but it's

    age even and just desire

    i don't know if that's a problem that

    can ever be solved you know i wish it

    was there's a lot of research i see that

    talks to students and you know looks to

    interview students in stem

    around these things but i just don't

    know how many faculty would be willing

    to participate in something like that

    i agree with you i think it would need

    to be heavily anonymized in order to

    actually get

    at the root of the thoughts behind that

    what about like flipping the question

    onto your own research what do you wish

    people understood about your own

    research your writing the biggest thing

    is that it holds

    just as much value as anything someone

    would consider

    theoretical research it's really

    frustrating

    in this field and it's not just over

    this last year

    but i'd say leading up to probably

    george floyd's murder that there was an

    inability for the greater computing

    community

    to recognize and truly appreciate

    education-based research or research

    that is not

    quantitative and i'd say even in the cs

    education space that was the case

    because when i submitted

    that 60 paper it was a position paper

    and i remember when i got the reviews

    there

    were actually one reviewer who was very

    much like

    you know i don't see why this is even

    here there's no

    data that's been collected you need to

    collect this data get feedback and then

    submit it and

    this may be more viable and i said and

    you're the exact reason why i wrote this

    paper

    you know it's a position paper like

    otherwise it would have been a research

    it's just

    but that again speaks to how problematic

    that not even just the greater computing

    community is but just cs education

    there's this issue of if you're doing

    this kind of work then it's less than or

    it's not as rigorous and it's

    not as valuable and then i tell people

    well it's really interesting because

    after george floyd's death and the black

    lives matter protests

    sparked up all of a sudden all of these

    things that

    i've been talking about that my

    colleagues who look like me

    or who are from other systemically

    marginalized groups have been talking

    about

    all of a sudden all the work we're doing

    is the bee's knees

    so why did it take all of this

    for you to see value in what we're doing

    why did it have to be such an explosive

    event and such a tragic event for you to

    find value

    in this and then my biggest issue is

    what happens january 1

    like all right we made it through 2020

    and then yep wiping my hands we're good

    we addressed racism again we're back to

    business as usual well we've seen this

    before right

    this isn't new like we didn't live

    through the civil rights movement but

    my parents did you know my grandparents

    did it and so on and so

    the same thing happened there where

    people felt like okay well

    the civil rights act was passed the

    voting rights act passed okay we're good

    racism is over we

    elected obama here we are yeah it'll be

    interesting especially

    what happens in early november it

    frustrates me because i felt like

    it shouldn't have taken all of this to

    value

    the work that we do and it's sad it's

    not even sad it's pathetic because i

    feel like it just speaks to the

    amount of lip service in so many ways

    you know

    and you see people who are in computing

    who are doing this work and this is what

    they solely focus on then it becomes

    like oh great here's somebody coming to

    talk to us about diversity again like

    oh like this is really the problem right

    and it's annoying to me

    because you know i have to tell people

    well don't get it twisted

    i have three degrees in computer science

    i am very skilled at what i do

    my thesis was built around optical

    network survivability

    so i can do queueing theory programming

    whatever you want to talk about

    but i choose not to because it doesn't

    make a hill of beans to me that research

    doesn't matter to me

    and honestly it never did if i'm being

    i've shared that before with others like

    i did the research

    that my advisor was doing because i

    wanted to work with my advisor and i

    really value the fact that he valued me

    i could care less about that but what i

    care about are the things that i'm

    working on and i should not

    be forced to pivot what i'm doing

    to be accepted by the greater computing

    community

    yeah i like that there was a quote a

    professor that i know who was at a

    qualitative research conference and was

    given the opening keynote and i was like

    thank you so much for having me

    i hope this is the last qualitative

    resource conference we ever have and the

    reason why is because i think we should

    be asking questions

    and finding a method that answers those

    questions we should not be focusing on

    the design

    itself that's being used and kind of

    like siloing those things out and so

    the fact that quantitative is seen as

    like this end-all be-all it's like well

    no it you can only answer certain types

    of questions with quantitative

    and you need other methods to answer

    different questions so we need to be

    looking at this again from a

    multi-perspectival approach

    and asking many different types of

    questions but the fact that we aren't

    doing that it's problematic

    absolutely absolutely and it continues

    to drive the issues that we see because

    everyone focuses on the numbers

    that's it nothing else makes sense and

    if we can check the box and say well

    we've got

    x percentage then problem solved i'm

    curious if

    your answer will kind of build off of

    that but do you have any questions

    for myself or to the field i think the

    biggest question i'd ask

    is for anyone what are you gonna do now

    that you know

    right now that you know because there's

    a lot of people who before

    said oh i didn't know i didn't realize

    it was this bad

    be it society or be it in computer i

    don't understand how anyone could not

    know in computing but

    even in society you know now that you've

    seen the black and the ivory hashtag so

    you know it just wasn't that one black

    student or faculty member or postdoc

    that was there

    now that you all participated in

    shutdown stem what are you going to do

    with that

    how are you going to translate that into

    a lifetime

    career commitment to creating

    a better space and a better environment

    for

    everyone i don't think that's something

    that i would expect anyone to answer

    quickly

    but i would expect people to be able to

    marinate on that and

    think right it's gotta go past book

    clubs because everybody's reading right

    now

    right but then you gotta do something

    with that so what are you willing to do

    and and more so i'd ask how much skin

    are you willing to put in the game what

    are you willing to sacrifice

    in order to make sure that it's met and

    the goal is reached that really

    resonates with me and kind of

    i think it's a great answer even to the

    the next question i have which is like

    what could i

    do to better serve the cs education

    community through this podcast

    keep asking the hard questions bringing

    on the people who are going to make

    listeners uncomfortable and it doesn't

    have to be someone who's

    always you know in the space that i'm

    working in

    but there are other people who are doing

    work that infuses this

    right you had shuchi on earlier she does

    a lot of that

    kristen's doing it you know just making

    sure

    that there's a good representation of

    men women and non-binary people who are

    in this space who are willing

    to get on the mic and say this is who i

    am and this is what i'm doing and this

    is why it matters

    and i would especially say

    get people who are willing to come on

    and say i don't fit the traditional

    narrative

    yeah i like that right because again

    we operate in a black white

    male female anything else rich poor

    that's it

    right everything in our world is binary

    but

    having people who get on the mic and

    talk about the fact

    that i do not operate or identify

    as a cisgender heterosexual

    white man right i'm transgender i'm

    non-binary

    i may have a religious identity that

    other people don't necessarily

    understand but i want to talk about that

    as well

    and showing the human part of the

    computer scientists and the educators

    and letting people see that there are

    all of these different identities

    working in this space and we have to be

    able to bring

    our fullest cells every single day i

    should not

    have to code switch i should not have to

    try to assimilate

    i should not have to try to pass

    as something and someone i am not in

    order to be accepted and in order for my

    work to be

    valued yeah i love that you know i think

    about it and i say how many transgender

    computer scientists do we learn about

    every day or hear about

    you know how many people are willing to

    to speak to these things because if i

    got up here and i never

    talked about my sexuality or my identity

    as a cisgender heterosexual

    black woman and all you would know is i

    was a black woman right but i think it's

    important that

    everyone should be able to hear

    different perspectives

    everyone should hear about other

    individuals who share different

    identities

    and the amazing work they're doing and

    what you can glean

    and learn from them and their

    experiences and not just their work but

    their experience

    yeah and one of the things that i've

    kind of noticed in different

    marginalized groups is

    allies who are helping don't

    take control of that narrative so like

    i'm writing a paper

    on transness for music educators to

    consider with their students

    so i'm an author there's another author

    who's a trans

    woman a trans man and a

    non-conforming person who's also on it

    so like we're all

    coming at this from different

    perspectives within like the trans

    community and talking about it

    and one of the things that we're

    bringing up is there are not enough

    people who identify within community who

    are actually

    speaking about this and that needs to

    happen so the narrative has largely been

    controlled

    by cis individuals which is great to

    have the allies but they shouldn't be in

    control of the narrative and some of

    that is coming into like the black lives

    matter

    protest where it's like i support black

    lives matter but i am not going out

    there and

    trying to change the narrative and

    trying to make it about me as a white

    individual

    and some of that is happening in some of

    the protests which is then

    taking away the power from black

    individuals and creating a problem

    absolutely and i'd say even you know

    these are things that

    people again have to become

    comfortable having those uncomfortable

    conversations

    and you have to be okay getting it wrong

    and apologizing for it learning from it

    and moving forward i think there's

    always this fear

    of being wrong or offending

    instead of recognizing that it's okay to

    make a mistake but it's not okay to not

    learn from it and grow from it which is

    why i talk all the time about

    you know that assessment and my gender

    labeling it was terrible to think about

    how someone who identified as

    non-conforming

    may see that and realize she's othering

    me and how could she do that as a black

    woman

    but it was an honest mistake it was

    something that i had to learn from and

    accept

    and realize that i don't need to change

    what's out there because i need people

    to see

    the change in the work that i do and how

    i've progressed

    and become better because of it and

    that's the only way that

    everyone in this community will start to

    improve and then like i said everyone

    else will feel like

    they matter and i can't resonate enough

    why it matters to be seen like you said

    for people to get out of the way

    right if that's not your voice and i

    can't speak to this

    identity then it's not my responsibility

    to i remember there was a question at a

    talk i recently gave and someone asked

    me about

    well how do i navigate spaces as a

    biracial person and i said well i can't

    tell you that because i'm not biracial

    but i can point you to some resources

    and

    experts who are who are doing this work

    but it's not for me to say that right

    it's for me as an advocate an ally

    whatever that is or activist to be able

    to say

    i can help bring you to the things that

    you need

    even if i can't give it to you or do it

    for you myself but i'm not gonna

    go out here and try to start speaking

    for you because i can't

    yeah i like that yeah finding ways to

    support without taking control of that

    and whatnot and not answering for other

    people

    it's definitely important so the last

    question is where my people go to

    connect with you and the organizations

    that you work with

    so there are a few ways my personal

    website is just my name nikki

    washington.com and i

    cki the work that i'm working on right

    now

    around identity and computing our

    website

    is identity at cs.duke.edu

    that has information on the other

    members of the research team

    some of the work we're doing right now

    the 3c assessment

    that i'm working on that i noted in the

    paper

    when twice as good isn't enough and then

    it's also

    a place for the 3c fellows program so

    we're currently soliciting for that

    we'll start

    february through june and that will be

    for

    any educators graduate students or

    industry professionals who are

    interested

    in learning more about identity

    in computing how to create courses

    around it course modules and other

    activities

    that can impact their departments and

    universities and students

    in ways that are more meaningful and

    engaging and sustaining

    so i would say those are the main two if

    anyone's interested in just following

    the crazy that is my mind across the day

    i'm always on twitter so i'm at dr

    underscore nikki ww on twitter

    those are pretty much the three easiest

    ways to reach me between

    any one of those sites i'm always around

    and with that that concludes this week's

    episode of the csk8 podcast

    friendly reminder to visit the show

    notes to check out many of the

    resources that were discussed in this

    particular episode and if you haven't

    done so please consider sharing this

    episode or your favorite episode

    with another colleague in cs education

    thank you for taking the time to listen

    to this episode stay tuned next week for

    another unpacking scholarship episode

    and two weeks from now for another

    interview i hope you're all having a

    wonderful week and staying safe

Guest Bio

Dr. Nicki Washington is a professor of the practice of computer science at Duke University and the author of Unapologetically Dope: Lessons for Black Women and Girls on Surviving and Thriving in the Tech Field. Her career in higher education began at Howard University as the first Black female faculty member in the Department of Computer Science. Her professional experience also includes Winthrop University, The Aerospace Corporation, and IBM.

Recognized as one of Essence Magazine’s “Essence Tech Stars: 15 Black Women Disrupting the Tech Industry,” Dr. Washington has led partnerships with the Howard University Middle School of Math and Science, Google, Exploring Computer Science, and Washington, DC Public Schools to introduce computer science courses and teacher professional development across Washington, DC high schools. She was a lead writer for the K-12 CS Framework (led by Code.org) and South Carolina K-12 Computer Science and Digital Literacy Standards. Her efforts in K-12 CS education have directly impacted approximately 10 million K-12 students and thousands of educators in over 20 states and Washington, DC, and they will continue to impact more nationwide as additional states develop K-12 CS standards.

At the undergraduate and industry levels, Dr. Washington’s efforts to recruit and retain students/graduates of color in computing include creating and implementing the first Googler-in-Residence program at Howard University in 2013. This project led to implementations of Googlers-in-Residence at other HBCUs (including Morehouse, Spelman, NC A&T, Fisk, and Hampton). Her current work focuses on addressing the diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in the tech industry by measuring and improving the cultural competence of students in undergraduate computing departments nationwide, including the development of assessments and courses dedicated to this work.

Dr. Washington has been a guest writer for CSforALL, USA Today College, The Root/VerySmartBrothas, Code.org, and Mama Knows It All, and her interviews have included Essence Magazine, The Atlantic, WHUR’s The Daily Drum, Association of Computing Machinery’s “People of ACM,” and Modern Figures Podcast.

She also provides numerous keynotes, panel discussions, and workshops on diversity, equity, and inclusion in computing+tech for various organizations, including the University of Virginia, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, UC-Irvine, North Carolina A&T, Marist College, American University, Bennett College for Women, Johnson C. Smith University, SXSW EDU, Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., National Coalition for Women in Technology, blackComputeHER, Grace Hopper Celebration, Innovate Your Cool, National Society of Black Engineers, Google, Red Ventures, Wallbreakers, NASA, Advancing the Careers of Technical Women (ACT-W), The DC STEM Summit, and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Washington is also an experienced technical writer/editor, with over 15 years of consulting experience ranging from small to large enterprises. She is a graduate of Johnson C. Smith University (B.S., ‘00) and North Carolina State University (M.S., ’02; Ph.D., ’05), becoming the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. at the university and 2019 Computer Science Hall of Fame Inductee. She is a native of Durham, NC.

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