Name: Valerie Barr
Title: Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Company: Hofstra University
Contact Info:
http://cs.hofstra.edu/~vbarr
How I arrived at my present job (academic and other influences): I left graduate school in 1979 with an MS in CS. After working in industry I ended up in a teaching job which was suggested by a friend. That led me to a research project that I found interesting, which led me to return to graduate school for my PhD. I started my current job in Sept. 1995 and received my degree in May 1996.
How I organize my day: On the days that I teach I usually alternately answer email, deal with bureaucratic stuff for the dept., teach, meet with students, and do grading and other things that are easiest to do on the machines at school. On the days that I don't teach I work from home, grading, preparing lectures, and answering email.
Amount of time spent working daily (at home and office): On teaching days, I spend approx. 12-13 hours working. On non-teaching weekdays I spend approx. 6-8 hours working. On weekends I will typically spend about 2 hours per day working. In the summer I spend no more than 4-5 hours per day working.
What I do to get myself thinking creatively: Read some articles about related work, pick one small subproblem and chip away at it, go for a bike ride.
My problem-solving strategy: Make a list of the small parts and try to tackle those.
What I do to relieve stress: Bike ride.
My hero, mentor, or person I most admire and why: I've been fortunate to have lots of mentors as I've traveled through college, summer jobs, grad school, industry jobs, academic jobs. I'm not sure there is a single hero or person I most admire. One person who stands out is Prof. Harriet Pollatsek (Math Dept., Mount Holyoke College) who was one of my teachers in college, and a colleague when I went back there to teach briefly. She was great in the classroom, is incredibly wonderful to her students, seems totally unruffled all the time, is administratively and bureaucratically very successful, and just seems to "do it all" with class and dignity -- and has a life as well.
What I do to mentor those who work for me: When I worked in industry I tried very hard to make sure that my staff were properly trained and had the support they needed to do their job. Now I don't really have people who work for me, but as new people join our dept., I have taken on the role of making sure they know the ropes, help them handle the various forms of evaluation that go on, clue them in to our student body, etc.
One event or decision in my life I wish I could go back and change: There are times when I'm sorry that I didn't stick with grad school the first time around, but I don't see how I could have really made any different decision at the time.
What values are the most important to me and what I value in others: Honesty, forthrightness, personal organization.
What inspires, motivates, or gets me excited about my job on a daily basis: The students, the students, the students. Seeing the lightbulb go on over a student's head as she or he finally grasps a concept, being able to write strong recommendations so that my students get good jobs or get into grad school -- these are the things that I live for.
Biography:
EDUCATION: BA, Applied Mathematics, Mount Holyoke College MS, Computer Science, New York University PhD, Computer Science, Rutgers University JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS: "Applications of Rule-Base Coverage Measures to Expert System Evaluation," accepted for publication in Journal of Knowledge Based Systems. "Application of Control Flow and Data Flow Analysis to Rule-Based Systems," Annals of Software Engineering Volume 4 (1997), pp. 171-189. "Exploring Expert Systems," IEEE Computer, November 1988, pp. 68-73. REFEREED CONFERENCES: Papers: "Quantitative Performance Prediction for Rule-Based Expert Systems," to be presented at FLAIRS-99, May, 1999, Orlando, FL. "Software Testing Across the Curriculum," Eastern Small College Computing Conference, October, 1998, Poughkeepsie, NY. "Applications of Rule-Base Coverage Measures to Expert System Evaluation," AAAI-97, August, 1997, Providence, RI. "Rule-Based System Testing with Control and Data Flow Techniques," International Software Quality-Week '96, May 1996, San Francisco, CA. "TRUBAC: A Tool for Testing Expert Systems with Rule-Base Coverage Measures," 13th Annual Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, Sept. 1995, Portland, OR. Panels: "CS1 Program Examples," 1998 Northeastern Small College Computing Conference. INVITED PRESENTATIONS: University of Pennsylvania, October 1996. "Applications of Rule-Base Coverage Measures," Computer and Information Science Department Colloquium. INVITED WORKSHOPS: "Quantitative Performance Prediction for Rule-Based Expert Systems," AAAI-98 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, at AAAI-98, July, 1998, Madison, WI. "Application of Clustering Analysis to Coverage Testing for Large KBS," with Mala Mehrotra, AAAI-98 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, at AAAI-98, July, 1998, Madison, WI. AAAI-97 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, at AAAI-97, August, 1997, Providence, RI. International Software Engineering Education Workshop, at International Conference on Software Engineering, May 1997, Boston, MA. "Rule-Base Coverage Measures Applied to Testing Rule-Bases with Uncertainty," IJCAI-95 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, at IJCAI, 1995, Montreal. "Rule-Based Systems Testing using Rule-Base Coverage Measures," Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems at the IEEE Conference on AI Applications, February, 1995. AAAI-94 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, AAAI-94, Seattle, WA. "Incorporating Uncertainty in a DAG-Based Approach to Static and Dynamic Verification of Rule-Based Systems: Extended Abstract," AAAI-93 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, at AAAI-93, Washington, DC. "A DAG-Based Approach to Static and Dynamic Verification of Rule-Based Systems," AAAI-92 Workshop on Verification and Validation of Expert Systems, at AAAI-92, San Jose, CA. FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS: Hofstra University Faculty Research and Development Grant, 1999-2000 and 1996-1997; Hofstra University Presidential Research Award, 1996-1997. Select to attend the NSF Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement workshop "Testing in the Undergraduate Curriculum", June 1999. Selected to attend the Undergraduate Artificial Intelligence Education Workshop, sponsored by NSF, June 1996 (http://www.cis.temple.edu/ugai/ugai96.html) University Fellowship for Graduate Study, Rutgers University, 9/93 - 6/94. Marian Johnson Fellowship for Graduate Study, Rutgers University, 1/93 - 6/93. The GE Foundation Faculty for the Future Program, Summer 1992. Class of 1905 Fellowship for Graduate Study, Mount Holyoke College, 9/90 - 6/91. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: Institute for Women and Technology Advisory Board member. Member of Association for Computing Machinery, ACM SIGART, ACM SIGCSE, AAAI, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, Sigma Xi. Special tracks coordinator for FLAIRS-99. Reviewer for Annals of Software Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Education; SIGCSE 1999; 1999, 1998 and 1997 Northeastern Small College Computing Conference; Metrics '97.
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