Professor Mary Beth Rosson

Associate Dean of Information Sciences and Technology and Professor at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, most of her research concentrates on End User Programming, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). She is also Affiliate Professor of Instructional Systems in the College of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology in 1982 from the University of Texas. Prior to joining the new School of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State in 2003, she was a Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech Computer Science department for 10 years and a research staff member and manager at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center for 11 years. She currently co-directs Penn State's Computer-Supported Collaboration and Learning (CSCL) Lab with her husband, Dr. John Carroll. Within the CSCL, she directs the Informal Learning in Software Development (ILSD) group. They are studying a variety of end-user software construction tasks, with a focus on web application design, development, and debugging. They are also starting to work with younger learners, for example middle and high school girls who are first learning about programming. She is a founding member of the End Users Shaping Effective Software(EUSES) Consortium, which focuses on issues and techniques related to end-user software engineering. Her other research interests include community informatics, environments and tools for object-oriented programming and design, and visual programming environments. She has also done work related to scenario-based design and minimalism. She and Carroll co-developed the task-artifact framework for design, an ?action science? approach to human-computer interaction (HCI). Also with Jack Carroll, she helped develop and study the Blacksburg Electronic Village online community center, a seminal contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of participation in online communities. She and Carroll have co-authored a book, ?Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction?. In addition, she has co-authored dozens of book chapters. She has authored or co-authored over one hundred journal articles and refereed conference proceedings. She is a founding member of the EUSES Consortium (End Users Shaping Effective Software), a group of researchers from Oregon State, CMU, Drexel, University of Nebraska, and Penn State, who collaborate on a broad range of issues and techniques related to end-user software engineering. She has served as the General Chair for CHI 2007, Doctoral Symposium Chair for DIS 2006, Program Committee and Graduate Symposium Mentor for VL/HCC 2006, and General Chair for OOPSLA 2000. She was awarded the SIGCHI Award for service as CHI 1997 Technical Program Co-Chair International and the ACM Recognition of Service Award in 2001. In 2007 she was recognized as a Distinguished Scientist by the ACM.