Your students often praise you for your accessible teaching style, often referencing your ability to make class material relatable for them and how approachable they find you to be when they have questions. How do you make yourself accessible to your students in this way during and outside of class?

I think that there are two main aspects to this. The first is that I believe that I have a holistic view of our curriculum. I have a reasonable feel for what is covered in other courses and what other courses students are likely to have taken by the time they reach any particular course with me. This allows me to draw parallels between the current material and things that they have been introduced to in other courses. It is always easier to understand things when they are couched in terms of things that you know. I also strive to come up with examples from normal life. I'm not as good at that one, but if I have taught a course several times I will have generally built up a reasonable set of examples that students can identify with.

One thing that I find very interesting about this question is that I've been told many times that I'm scary to start off with. Part of this is just being a 6'4" male. Some people find me physically intimidating for that reason. Thankfully, once students get to know me the fear goes away pretty quickly. I also strongly encourage students to meet with me out of class. Being in an environment where we are sitting down next to one another probably helps make me a lot less intimidating early on. I also try to use humor to break down the barrier of fear. Students who have had me for many courses know they can interact with me naturally and I think that rubs off on the other students as well.

Your students note how assignments are structured so that students are encouraged to get feedback along the way (for instance, in office hours). What tips do you have to share about constructing such assignments?

I think that there are two aspects to this and it isn't anything very magical. First, make the assignments hard. If an assignment is easy and can be done quickly, no student will ever come to talk to you about it. Second, make them somewhat open-ended. This forces students to ask clarifying questions and begins a dialog. I also like this because it allows students to use creativity in their solutions. The downside as a professor is that open-ended questions are generally more time consuming to grade.

If you could go back in time, what teaching advice would you offer a younger version of yourself?

This is a hard one. Oddly, I don't think that I have changed all that much in my general approach to teaching since I arrived at Trinity. The details of how I teach any course are constantly morphing as I learn what works and what doesn't plus adapt to changing technology to make sure I'm covering what matters. Perhaps I would advise myself in my first year to not try to squeeze all of C++ into CS1. I like making my courses hard, but it has to be done in moderation and that was just silly.

If your students learned only one thing from you (of course, hopefully they learn much more than that!), what would you hope it to be?

My first reaction to this question was "Which class?" My answer would be different for different ones. It is further exacerbated by the fact that CS is ever-changing. When I try to think broadly across all of my courses though, there is something that jumps out. When solving problems, especially using code, I want them to remember to take small steps and focus. Always solve easy problems. If a problem is hard, break it down more. I would also throw in that practice is how you learn everything. Anything that you aren't actively practicing and thinking about you are forgetting and losing skill in.