Things change. Seasons end, and new ones emerge.
In 2016, I joined Boise State University, and founded the People and Information Research Team with Sole Pera. This was the first (only?) multi-PI research group in the department, and one of a very small number of multi-PI recommender systems groups in the US.
A few years ago, I posted annual reviews of what I did in the year; thought that this year I might bring that tradition back.
This year has been a year of some major achievements and changes. I earned tenure, published a major piece of integrative scholarship that I’ve been working on for a few years, and one of my Ph.D students successfully defended her proposal.
I’m also working on figuring out what the next phase of structure and operation looks like for my research lab, since Sole Pera moved to Delft. I’m thrilled she got this new position! It’s been a very good 6 years building the PIReTs and having other academic adventures with her, and we continue to work together remotely on various things. For now, she’s been continuing to meet with the research group while some of the current students finish and we figure out what the long-term future of the PIReT ship will be.
It’s time for this year’s State of the Tools. Things are a bit in flux this year, as I’m working on transitioning my endpoints from Windows to macOS, but I’ll run down where I’m at and where I’m headed; there have also been substantial changes in our personal computing infrastructure.
I’m starting to do some speaking again, and now that Japan has opened back up for travel, I’m very pleased to be giving a couple of talks later this month:
I’ll have a little time around the edges of my trip, so if you are in Tokyo and would like to connect, send me an e-mail and let’s see what we can arrange. Or say hi at IBIS!
As long as I have been teaching, I’ve used a “late day” policy in most of my classes. I designed this policy after learning about universal course design while taking Preparing Future Faculty at the University of Minnesota, but I don’t think I’ve ever publicly written down the motivations and design of this policy. So here you go!