Jared Amalong
Director of Computer Science
Sacramento County Office of Education, Sacramento, California
Why do you want to serve on the CSTA Board and what do you hope to accomplish as a member of the Board? How does this align with current CSTA activities?
Building on over 10 years of classroom and administrative experience, my professional mission and personal passion is to help scale CS learning opportunities for all students in the Greater Sacramento Region. I’ve found one way to advance this mission and passion is to support the great work of current CS teachers in the region through ad-hoc coaching, as well as provide professional learning opportunities to teachers who are interested in teaching CS to their students. I’ve also found that supporting teachers in a community of practice – much like those created by CSTA chapters across the country – helps build and expand capacity to advance CS education for all students. As a Board member, I would commit to supporting local, regional, state, national, and international CSTA initiatives to help realize CS for all students.
What leadership experiences and skills can you contribute to CSTA and its Board?
I am very proud of my teaching experience in CS. In fact, CSTA was a source of ongoing professional learning during my time in the classroom. In my current role as Director of Computer Science at the Sacramento County Office of Education, I lead several initiatives to broaden student participation in CS, including the USDOE grant project named “CS4NorCal”. I’ve served as a CS Principles facilitator since 2018. Additionally, I co-lead the CSforCA Teaching and Learning Workgroup, which is a statewide advocacy group. Lastly, I helped develop the California K-12 Computer Science Standards in 2018.
What previous experience do you have with CSTA?
Currently, I am serving as the President of both the Sacramento Chapter and the California Far North Chapter of CSTA. My hope is to continue to serve teachers in the Sacramento Chapter while supporting new Chapter Leaders in the California Far North Chapter as they take ownership of their community of practice. Since 2013, I have served in different positions in Chapter Leadership, including President. In 2019 and 2020, I was honored to serve on the CSTA Chapter Leaders Committee. I’ve enjoyed attending the National Conferences since 2016. I participated in the AI4K12 Working Group, which is a collaboration between CSTA, AAAI, and universities specializing in AI education.
What experiences and perspectives do you bring to supporting equitable participation in computing education?
In California, the most important issues for K-12 CS education relate to scaling access for students who are underrepresented in CS college and career pathways. To help address the inequities, I’ve marshaled resources to support new and veteran CS teachers across California. The largest project I manage at SCOE, the Summer of CS, is a professional learning program that features equity-minded CS workshops for educators. I helped design the CSforCA Administrator Workshop and supported the creation and ongoing revisions of the CSforCA CS Equity Guide. Both of these resources are intended to broaden student participation.
Nimmi Arunachalam
CTE Specialist
School District of Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach, FL
Why do you want to serve on the CSTA Board and what do you hope to accomplish as a member of the Board? How does this align with current CSTA activities?
I want to serve on the Board of CSTA to contribute to the ongoing efforts of the organization that has served me and my community of educators over the past decade in the area of CS education. I believe that CSTA has the ability to empower and engage CS teachers far beyond the borders of the US, and I am eager to contribute and be an integral part of this phenomenon in the global CS education space. I am passionate about issues related to equitable access to CS curriculum for students of all abilities, and equitable access to high-quality professional development opportunities for CS educators of all backgrounds and expertise levels. These are critical issues that CSTA is focused on and I would love to contribute to this joint effort by leveraging on my skills and experience.
What leadership experiences and skills can you contribute to CSTA and its Board?
My leadership skills include building a coalition of educators with a common purpose, building a culture of collaboration and cooperation while being a hard-working leader who leads by example. I led the efforts to create a PBC/Broward Chapter in South Florida with a coalition of chapter leaders and a culture of collaboration and openness while offering high-quality PD opportunities. I have extensive experience leading teacher PD’s at national and local levels, bridging the connection between K-12 and the Computing industry, guiding curriculum and industry certification adoption in CS, and advocacy work with state leaders towards CS policy. My experience is growing in the area of CS research as I begin my doctoral program in Engineering and CS Education in Fall 2022 at FIU.
What previous experience do you have with CSTA?
I am the President of the PBC/Broward Chapter in Florida and I lead a team of 4 other chapter leaders and close to 100 chapter leaders. I was successful in initiating and setting up the chapter in the middle of the Covid pandemic. I have been serving on the CSTA Chapter Leadership Committee for close to a year and was a CS Honors Society sponsor at my school in 2019-20. My chapter leadership team and I collaborate regularly with the Miami-Dade chapter of CSTA. I am starting a PhD (Engineering and CS Education) program at Florida International University in fall 2022 and look forward to contributing in the area of CS educational research.
What experiences and perspectives do you bring to supporting equitable participation in computing education?
I have organized many student events to redress the low participation of underrepresented minority students in CS programs in my district. The annual Girl Engineers of Tomorrow Day (GET Day) at my former school increased the enrollment of girls in our engineering academy. I initiated and established ways to increase cyber awareness and hands-on learning experiences for students in a Title 1 school through participation in CyberPatriot and an in-house Cybersecurity internship experience. Several students who participated were English language learners and those having a wide range of prior skills and academic abilities. I bring the perspective of a district administrator of CTE programs pursuing the goal of widening the reach of computer science to diverse students in our community.
Jared O’Leary
Director of Education & Research
BootUp PD, Tolleson, Arizona
Why do you want to serve on the CSTA Board and what do you hope to accomplish as a member of the Board? How does this align with current CSTA activities?
I want to serve on CSTA’s Board because I want to help the community out. I was introduced to CSTA a few years ago when I was teaching K-8 coding classes and applied for and received one of the Teaching Excellence in Computer Science Awards. That award really helped me out in a variety of ways, so I’ve wanted to give back ever since (e.g., serving on CSTA’s PD committee, CSTA’s awards committee, CSTA AZ’s Board, reviewing CSTA conference presentation submissions, volunteering at CSTA’s conferences, etc.). I want to give back and help with CSTA’s commitment to serve the community in various capacities (e.g., building a community, providing PD, providing resources, etc.).
What leadership experiences and skills can you contribute to CSTA and its Board?
I’ve worked with every grade Kindergarten through doctoral in multiple content areas, have overseen the creation of 50+ hours of PD for a nonprofit that works nationwide, have developed curricula used by kids/teachers around the world, am a co-PI on multiple awarded and submitted NSF grants, have won multiple awards for teaching and for my research, presented over 100 times in North America, have a dozen or so publications out in various journals and research handbooks, and host a podcast on CS education with over 100 episodes that interview guests and unpacks scholarship in relation to CS education. In these various capacities I have worked in groups or independently. I have also been in roles where I have to make difficult decisions while considering multiple perspectives/factors.
What previous experience do you have with CSTA?
I’ve served on CSTA’s PD, standards, and awards committees; been a conference reviewer for multiple years; am the treasurer for CSTA’s AZ chapter; volunteer for the summer conference; and consistently present sessions at various CSTA events/conferences.
What experiences and perspectives do you bring to supporting equitable participation in computing education?
I have experience presenting and publishing on various equitable practices that are relevant to CS education in order to include all students and to actively dismantle deficit framings and barriers that are present in educational contexts. I am an advocate for providing access in ways that actively represent diverse populations, perspectives, and ontologies through inclusive strategies that actually encourage all students to participate. I also provide a perspective as a nonbinary individual who has presented/published on how to be more inclusive of Trans students.