Welcome Xiaoyun Fu, who joined Rice University’s Department of Computer Science as a lecturer this fall. After completing her PhD in computer science at Iowa State University, Fu was a lecturer in Purdue’s EPICS program, a service-learning design program for their School of Engineering. She is teaching Computational Thinking and Reasoning About Algorithms this semester at Rice.
It’s not often someone can say that allergies played a decisive role in career direction, but this was the case with Fu, who in 2014 began a graduate program in chemistry at the University of Delaware.
“My intention was to get a PhD in chemistry and then teach at a college,” says Fu, whose bachelor of science degree from Tianjin University in China is also in chemistry.
After completing coursework and joining a research lab, however, Fu developed a severe rash and learned she was allergic to benzyl bromides, common substances in chemistry labs. Continuing lab work was out of the question, so Fu took a master’s degree in chemistry and had to switch career gears.
Unsure of which field of study to pursue, Fu remained committed to her goal of earning a PhD and teaching at a university. When her husband started a chemistry PhD program at Iowa State University, she began auditing computer science courses there.
She found the courses fun and interesting. “Solving puzzles—that’s a thing I’m good at: the logic and the theory,” she says.
Fu says she has an “innate sensitivity” to logical discrepancies, which predisposes her to thinking like a computer scientist: “When my friends or my husband tells me a story, if they made it up, I can tell,” she says, homing in on which details don’t fit. It’s an ability that serves her colleagues well. She can locate the “counter-example” that could derail a proposed train of thought. “I can find a black swan,” she says, i.e., “a discrepancy in their proof.”
After a year of auditing at Iowa, Fu formally enrolled in prerequisite courses for the PhD program. “I was a very active student in class,” she explains. “I asked a lot of questions….and my instructors started to notice me.” They asked her to work in their labs.
Although Fu’s PhD research centered on social networks, and how to quantify user influence and attitude, “My main focus was to teach after I got my PhD,” she says.
“I love teaching,” Fu says. She relishes its structure, its challenge, and the opportunity to share one’s knowledge with others. And long before she decided she wanted to teach, she was already thinking as a teacher.
“When I was a student, taking classes, when the professors were lecturing, I was thinking, ‘If I were to teach this topic, I may have added this example,’ because I saw my classmates were frowning and puzzled…. Even though I was a student, I was thinking with the mind of an instructor.”
Fu describes her current teaching philosophy as “student centered.”
“Computer science is hard for students,” she admits, “and I think what we instructors can do is all the preparation work for students, so their main job is to understand the material.” She knows, for example, if students are asked to download and print slides to bring to class, several won’t do it. By providing students with printouts in class “they are more likely to try” the assignment.
Fu wants to “make the classroom fun” to get students engaged. “I want to learn from game features and see if we can apply some of them in classrooms,” she says. Her “long-term goal” is to develop an interface that would employ gamelike features to keep students’ attention. “I would like to have a website, for them to have practice problems. Once they start using it, they can automatically track their progress: how much time they have spent studying, how many problems they have solved.”
By considering how students experience the classroom and what motivates them, Fu’s approach to teaching CS prioritizes not just that abundant information be organized and available, but that it be presented in dynamic, engaging ways.