Mark Stehlik, University Teaching Professor of Computer Science and Director, Computer Science Undergraduate Program, at Carnegie Mellon University, will be speaking at CMU-Q as part of the A. Nico Habermann Distinguished Lecture series. His lecture “A Teacher’s Life” will take place at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

The A. Nico Habermann Distinguished Lecture Series enables students to engage with prominent faculty and well-known leaders in the field of computer science. The lecture series is named after Professor A. Nico Habermann, head of the computer science department between 1980 and 1988 and Founding Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon.

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About the lecture: 

From the time I was in second grade, helping to “teach” my next door neighbor (newly arrived from Costa Rica) English, I wanted to be a teacher.  This talk will share my journey from that moment, through high school (number 2, but I tried harder), to college (and an Erdos number of 3 and admission to CMU), to my failed attempt at a PhD, but success as an emergency teacher, to being the founding director of the CMU CS undergraduate program, to being the first CMU University Teaching Professor.  The journey also includes two stints in Qatar (2006-08 and 2012-2015) which were incredibly important to me as an educator.

Biography:

I have been a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty for over 40 years. In 2023, I was the first teaching-track faculty member at Carnegie Mellon to be elevated to the rank of University Professor.  In addition to teaching, I have been the Director of the Computer Science undergraduate program since its inception in 1988 and have advised and graduated approximately 4,000 alumni over that period. I was Chief Reader of the College Board’s AP Computer Science examination in the late 1990’s and led a number of summer professional development workshops for high school teachers.  In particular, working with Allan Fisher and Jane Margolis on the NSF-sponsored 6APT project at that time, I helped the efforts to improve gender equity in our CS undergraduate program.  That work was highlighted in Allan and Jane’s “Unlocking the Clubhouse” book.

I was an inaugural member of the ACM Ed Policy Committee, and one of the co-authors of the 2010 “Running on Empty” paper on the Failure to Teach CS in High Schools.  I also taught at Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Doha, Qatar where I spent 3 years (2012-2015) as Associate Dean for Education running the entire undergrad enterprise.  Upon my return to the Pittsburgh campus, I was appointed Assistant Dean for Outreach, and co-founded CMU’s CS Academy high school curriculum project.  That project’s online CS1 Intro to Python Programming curriculum featuring auto-graded, interactive graphics has grown from 400 students in a 14-school pilot in Spring, 2018 to more than 550,000 students taught by over 15,500 teachers in over 77,000 classes in all 50 states and 68 countries as of Fall, 2025.  It is also worth noting that roughly 50% of the U.S. schools using the curriculum are Title I schools.