Teaching

Teaching CAD for Chip Design at Global Scale

• R. A. Rutenbar, “The First EDA MOOC: Teaching Design Automation to Planet Earth”, invited paper at ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference, June 2014.
• R.A. Rutenbar, “Teaching EDA at Planetary Scale: Reflections on the First EDA MOOCs,” invited keynote at IEEE Counsel on EDA (CEDA) distinguished lecture at Int’l Conference on CAD, November 2014.

Video intro for the VLSI CAD MOOC

Illinois CS+X Program: New Degrees at the Intersection of CS and Everything

A vast number of university undergraduate students need a solid base of computing+data to address challenging problems in social science, applied science, the humanities, policy, business, and the like. But they do not aspire to be computer (or even data) scientists. The Illinois CS+X program is a systematic experiment to take CS “wide” into these diverse disciplines. CS+X is a portfolio of novel B.S. degrees, launched in 2014, architected as (Half-CS + Half-X), delivered as a degree in the Dept. of X. The CS+X initiative is now 17 degrees,  across 6 colleges, including partners in the arts (CS+Music), humanities (CS+Philosophy), social sciences (CS+Economics), natural sciences (CS+Astronomy), professions (CS+Education), engineering (CS+Bioengineering), and agriculture (CS+CropScience). In some departments, CS+X students now comprise a substantial fraction of all enrolled students. With over 1,200 undergraduates enrolled, CS+X is the largest portfolio of hybrid degrees today at Illinois. The program has been highlighted in a number of news articles. A recent talk about our Illinois CS+X program was delivered at the 2016 US National Academies Workshop on the Growth of CS Undergrad Enrollments. I also reviewed the CS+X Program in an invited talk at the recent launch of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

Articles about CS+X and overview talks I’ve done:

• Rob Rutenbar, “The Illinois CS+X Programs”, TEACH: The Academic Symposium, part of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing Celebration Launch, February 2019. 
• Rob Rutenbar, “Taking Computing+Data Wide Across the Curriculum: The Illinois CS+X Programs”,  Dept. of CS, University of Maryland at College Park, invited talk, Oct. 2019.   
• Rob Rutenbar, “Taking Computing+Data Wide Across the Curriculum: The Illinois CS+X and MCS-DS Degree Programs”, invited talk at EECS Dept, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley CA, February 2017.
• Alexander C. Kafka, “The Discipline that is Transforming Higher Ed,” Chronicle of Higher Education,” April 15, 2020.
• Lauren Quinn, “The Climate Corporation Invests in Illinois’ CS+CROP SCIENCES Major”, April 30, 2019.
• Bianca Quilitan, “Should Colleges Let Ailing Majors Die or Revamp Them?” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2018.   
• Arlene Weintraub, “How Colleges are Ramping Up Technology Training,” US News & World Report, Sept. 16, 2019.

Curriculum Design Efforts

I’ve been fortunate to be part of several interesting curriculum design efforts, over the last 25 years of my life in academia. Below are a few of the historical papers:

• R.A. Rutenbar et al., “A New Undergraduate Curriculum,” Dept of ECE, Carnegie Mellon University, 1991. (The original report out from the now widely know ECE “Wipe The Slate Clean” committee.)
• R. Rutenbar et al, “Reengineering the Curriculum: Design and Analysis of a New Undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering Degree at Carnegie Mellon University,” Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 83, no. 9, Sept 1995.
• R. Rutenbar, “The Wipe the Slate Clean Approach to Systematic Change,” talk given at NSF curriculum workshop, July 1997.