CS Faculty Photo

Owen Astrachan

Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Computer Science, Professor of the Practice of Computer Science

Faculty Area:
Computer Science Education
Email:
ola at cs.duke.edu
Office:
D241 LSRC
Phone:
(919) 660-6522
Web page:
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~ola
Education

Ph.D., Duke University, 1992
M.S., Duke University, 1989
M.A.T., Duke University, 1979
A.B., Dartmouth College, 1978

Honors & Awards

NSF CISE Distinguished Education Fellow, 2007;Richard K. Lublin Teaching Award, 2002; Outstanding Instructor in Computer Science (University of British Columbia), 1998; NSF Career Award, 1997; Robert Cox Teaching Award, 1995.

Research

Paradigmatic changes in computer science education, instruction and pedagogy at scale, understanding programming and how to teach it.

Selected Publications
  • Steve Wolfman, Owen Astrachan, Mike Clancy, Kurt Eiselt,Jeffrey Forbes, Diana Franklin, David Kay, Mike Scott, and Kevin Wayne. "Teaching-Oriented Faculty at Research Universities." Communications of the ACM. November 2011, v. 54. n 11. pp. 35-37.
  • Owen Astrachan and Robert Dewar. “CS Education in the U.S.: Heading in the Wrong Direction.” Communications of the ACM. July 2009, v. 52, n. 7, pp. 41-45.
  • Owen Astrachan. “Pander to Ponder.” SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Chattanooga,TN, 2009.
  • Casey Alt, Owen Astrachan, Jeffrey Forbes, Richard Lucic,and Susan Rodger. "Social Networks Generate Interest in Computer Science." SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Houston, TX, 2006.
  • Owen Astrachan. A Computer Science Tapestry: Exploring Programming and Computer Science with C++. Second Edition, McGraw-Hill, 2000.