Rebecca Williams
University of Maryland-Baltimore County, MD·Education Research
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can now handle many common programming tasks, and that is changing what employers expect from new computing graduates. Software engineering jobs and computer science departments are both large and especially affected.
- Fields
Education Research
Computer Science
Social Science
- Topics
computing education
computer science education
artificial intelligence
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2030
What they work on
- Identify the knowledge, skills and attitudes new software engineers and developers need in an AI-driven workplace, through semi-structured interviews with current employees and hiring decision makers.
- Develop and launch a career readiness training program for computing students at two institutions, paired with internships, based on the interview findings.
- Refine the training and resources using feedback from interns and their industry mentors, then offer them to computing faculty and undergraduates at institutions across the U.S.
More about the research
The open question is whether college instructors and administrators can update their curricula fast enough to prepare students for these new demands. This collaborative project brings together hiring managers, employees, faculty and students to define the AI-related skills new software engineers need and to build curricula that serve both industry and universities.
Why it matters
Computing students face a job market reshaped by AI tools that automate routine programming. By grounding training in what employers and working engineers actually report, this project could help computing departments update their courses and help undergraduates build the AI-related skills that make them more competitive for software engineering jobs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Maura Borrego
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Education Research
Extract the skills employers want from engineering master's degree holders by applying natural language processing (NLP), including generative AI, to more than a decade of engineering job postings.
Jennifer Detlor
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Education Research
Identify which factors lead engineering students to self-identify as rural, and how strongly they hold that identity, using a survey in which students define rurality in their own terms.
Emily Lovell
University of California-Santa Cruz, CA·Education Research
Expose HBCU computer science students who have completed foundational coursework to open source career pathways through paid summer contributions to real-world open source software projects matched to their interests.
The school
University of Maryland-Baltimore County: 7 labs on PI Pages, $151M a year on research, 90 research doctorates a year.
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