Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Freshman Direct-Admit Seminar
Autumn 2021
Course Information
Welcome! We are so excited to have every one of you in the Allen School community!
Key Links
Meeting materials has all the materials we have available to share
The course Canvas site is where we have participation recorded
Learning Objectives
Everything we do in our seminar toward one of these goals, which we have developed based on our experience and passion helping students thrive in the Allen School and the entire field of computing. These are in no particular order.
Academic Success: Improve academic skills and adapt study habits, academic integrity, and broader academic engagement to college and the Allen School.
Career Preparation: Broaden knowledge of career paths for Allen School students and develop skills and resources toward pursuing them.
Personal Growth and Well-Being: Identify key self-care needs related to mental health, confidence, time management, communication, and happiness in college.
Inclusive Behavior and Responsibility: Learn best practices for working in diverse and inclusive teams as well as how technological innovation can be a tool for or against existing biases and marginalization.
Community Building: Feel socially connected to other Allen School students and an empowered member of the broader Allen School community.
Extracurricular Opportunities: Identify co-curricular and extracurricular activities of interest to complement academic pursuits.
Knowledge Building: Learn some of the jargon and pragmatics of “life in CSE” that can seem obscure or off-putting to newcomers.
Positive Impact: Learn some of the many, even surprising, ways that computing, including research in the Allen School, can positively impact humans and society while being mindful that technology can also have negative impact.
Meetings
We meet on Tuesdays 3:30-4:50 in Kane 120. We will have jam-packed agendas with several activities each day, so please arrive in time to be seated and ready to go.
Staff and contact information
To reach the entire staff, please create a private thread on the course discussion board. This is the preferred way to reach the course staff so that any of us can respond to your question and the rest of us can see the response. If you do need to reach out to just the instructor, feel free to email him.
Instructor: Dan Grossman, djg@cs.washington.edu, he/him, office hours by appointment
Head TAs: Vidhi Agrawal and Eman Mustefa
Each student is in a "group" with two of these wonderful TAs:
Group 1: Kristy Nhan and Thalia Tsai
Group 2: Edwin Nino Delgado and Mridula Venkatesan
Group 3: Sandy Chien and Vidhi Jain
Group 4: Jesse Hu and Sarah Rashid
Group 5: Aditi Joshi and Sanjana Sridhar
Group 6: Amrita Narasimhan and Yoonseo Song
Group 7: Chandni Rajasekaran and Jerry Huang
Group 8: Rituraj Sohoni and Vivek Patel
Group 9: Dhreeti Rathore and Tia Pham
Group 10: Duaa Zaheer and Vaishnavi Dontineni
Credits
This seminar is a real team effort, especially with substantial contributions from the spectacular Allen School Undergraduate Student Services Team. It builds on the experience from prior years, using a new format toward similar goals.