Dale Reed Bio

Dr. Dale Reed is Clinical Professor in the Computer Science department at UIC.  As director of CS Recruitment at UIC he has spearheaded UIC CS department undergraduate student population growth from 187 students in 2005 to over 1415 students in 2019, leading the national growth average by ~6%.  This growth involved giving over 300 presentations to ~10,000 high school students over 12 years.

Reed double-majored in English and Computer Science at North Park, then obtained his Ph.D. in CS at Northwestern, working on Expert Systems to do sound equalization.  Reed has long been invested in CS education for underrepresented minorities, with over three million dollars in career grant funding.  Fluent in Spanish, Dr. Reed was PI of the NSF-funded Summer Science Camp from 1992 to 1996, where 90% of the 100 Chicago inner-city middle-school students indicated an increased interest in STEM careers. As co-PI on an NSF SSTEM grant Reed recruited and nurtured 27 Latino, African-American and Female CS students in their CS education at UIC, with 85% of them (23 of 27) going on to tech careers. As a founding member of the Chicago CSTA Reed was part of the team that from 2009-2016 got CS to be a high school graduation requirement in Chicago Public Schools. He has been involved with the replication of the Los Angeles Exploring Computer Science (ECS) grant in Chicago and was a national ECS PD mentor facilitator.  Reed is part of the CAFECS group working to increase equity in CS education. 

Reed loves to teach, and has learned practical teaching strategies from the high school teachers he has been privileged to get to know, using inquiry to affect equity.  Reed believes that access to technology education is a justice issue for our time.

Reed served on his neighborhood school Local School Council (LSC) for 11 years and was a member of the College Board Development Committee for three years establishing the new AP CS Principles (CSP) course. Reed was on the AnitaB.org Board of Trustees from 20219-2025, serving as Vice-Chair from 2023-2025.  Reed was the Break Through Tech Chicago (BTTC) curriculum lead from 2020-2025, where the team raised the percentage of women and non-binary students in CS from 19% to 28%. He is part of the UIC team developing and offering a Google-funded Data+AI course and experiential learning for all students at UIC, democratizing the use of GenAI so non-technical students can accomplish technical tasks.

Reed can juggle and ride the unicycle, though not yet at the same time, and rides a skateboard or folding bike around campus.