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 was 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 30%. He is currently developing a Google-funded Data+AI course for all students at UIC, to prepare students for semester-long industry-sponsored experiential learning.

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

1. Toby Morris' comic on the effects of privilege.

2. Parable of the Polygons, showing the effects of our desire (or not) to be around people like us.

3. Do fun things with paper.

4. Think about how story-telling can be used to elicit the connection you want in your audience, described in this TED talk by David JP Phillips.  In public speaking the story-telling "angel's cocktail" consists of: 1. Suspense (Dopamine), 2. Empathy (Oxytocin), and 3. Laughter (endorphin).

5. Try Hard But Not That Hard: 85% is the Magic Number for Productivity.  WSJ article 9/10/23
   The 85% approach acknowledges when it is time to give 100%, and when it is OK to dial back, since each task does not require an all-out sprint.  This approach is based in part on a 2019 research paper where machine learning was used to determine that an 85% difficulty level was optimal difficulty level for learning, where content and experiences are not so hard that we are discouraged, but not so easy that we get bored.

6. NYT columnist David Brooks writes about making real connections with other people in The Essential Skills for Being Human, 10/19/2023.

7. Check the wording in a job posting using the gender decoder which identifies words usually associated as more masculine or more feminine.

8. In "The magical science of storytelling" TEDxStockholm talk, David JP Phillips describes the "Angels' Cocktail":
       1. Dopamine: Build suspense
       2. Oxytocyn: Create empathy
       3. Endorphins: Make people laugh

9. Ever wonder why the washrooms in so many UIC buildings are on the second floor rather than the first?  That's because all main campus buildings used to be connected by a series of large walkways one floor up, so the main entrances were on the second floor.  These were demolished in the early 1990's, but but Professor Steward Hicks, UIC School of Architecture, has digitally reproduced them in this YouTube video.  See more UIC campus historical photos at the UIC Art & Architecture page and this UIC news article.

10. Quotes I like:

    • Aspire to have your vocation in life be where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need. -- Frederick Buechner.
      See this and more quotes of his here.

    • "Teaching is giving opportunity to the students to discover things by themselves."   -- George Polya on teaching, from this 1966 video

    • “Brains grow best in the context of supportive relationships, low levels of stress, and through the creative use of stories. While teachers may focus on what they are teaching, evolutionary history and current neuroscience suggest that it is who they are and the emotional environment in the classroom they are able to create that are the fundamental regulators of neuroplasticity.”
      Dr. Lou Cozolino, from The Social Neuroscience of Education

    • Computer pioneer Fred Brooks (1931-–2022) noted that tasks with sequential constraints cannot be executed faster by adding more people.  He summarized this idea by saying "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned".

    • "Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling — the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration."
      - Niklaus Wirth, CS Pioneer and creator of the PASCAL programming language. Computer Magazine, 1995, pp. 64-68, vol. 28