“When I came to OSSM, I never went back, never looked back, and never regretted it.”
Akansha: What drew you to OSSM?
"The fact that I had a young family and university teaching was taking my time away from my family. At university, you’re advising graduate students, advising theses, writing grant proposals, teaching classes, publishing. I did all of that, and it was taking a toll on me and my family, because my husband and I were both tenure-track professors. I thought to myself, OSSM is 9 to 5. It’s teaching, so I don’t have to publish, supervise graduate students, so I will probably do this until my children are a little older, and then I’ll go back to university. When I came to OSSM, I never went back, never looked back, and never regretted it.
John: My personal observation with college students that I know has been that most of them don’t know what they want to do in college. Have you encouraged your children to do what they want to--is that your philosophy?
“Yeah. We’ve always said, you have to explore, you have to find your passion."
“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do.”
“There are some OSSM students that come to OSSM and know what they want to do in college. Which is fine. There are some of you who know what you want to do, but you go to college and you change your mind. Which is fine. There are some of you who have no idea what you want to do when you go to college. And that’s fine, too. The ones who don’t know what they want to do and have the hardest time at OSSM because there’s something wrong with them--and there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do. Even the ones who think they know what they want to do go to college and change their minds anyway. So what’s the shame in not knowing? The whole point is, you have to go to college and explore what you like. My eldest daughter thought she wanted to become an engineer, became an engineer, and didn’t like it. That was a bad idea. So there’s nothing wrong with changing your mind mid-way, and there’s nothing wrong with not knowing what you want to do. Exploration is the real key. I know many doctors who wanted to become doctors, became doctors, and are very unhappy doctors.
A: What influence do you think your career, your views, have had on your daughters?
“Nothing. Other than the fact that they had always seen their parents with their heads in the books and that had a positive influence on them. Their choice of career had nothing to do with our choice of career. Their desire to do whatever had nothing to do with what we imparted in them, or what we tried to instill in them, because we didn’t. I don’t dole out advice to my own kids, let alone other people, so I think it is important to see that their parents are involved in reading. I think the only influence we had on our kids was the fact that from the moment they were born, they always saw their parents reading, writing, doing something. That’s the only influence we had on our kids.”
“We always need mentors to help us go on days when going is a little hard.”
A: Is there anything or anyone you found inspiring when you did computer science?
“Yeah! When I did computer science, it was a very lonely experience, as far as being a woman in the field. I remember many special and undergraduate classes where I was either the only woman in the class, or one of very few women in the class. When I was going through graduate school in a conference I attended, I met a group a women who had started a support group for women in systems engineering called SYSTERS. This was back when there were no websites, so we had an email list, where anybody with questions or needed support in handling a delicate situation could post questions to. Any senior women with perspectives to share would write to you with their advice. The original person with the replies would send it all to the group for other women. That was my support group. There were few women around me, at least geographically, that could give me advice, so this was my really, worldwide, support group. These were the women that I looked up to early on. In fact, the SYSTERS group is still going, and now, of course, has a website. You really need a support group. Not just for women, but men, too. We always need mentors to help us go on days when going is a little hard.”
“I was never told, “Girls are not supposed to study this subject, or girls are not good at this subject.”
Maggie: Take us back to when you first began your computer science studies in Iran. How are your experiences there different from the field here, in America?
“A lot less exclusionary. Unfortunately in the US, you are more aware of being a girl, and you are not supposed to be good at math because you are a girl. That’s not something that’s common in other parts of the world. For example, in Iran, nobody told me “You’re a girl, you’re not supposed to like math, or physics.” Girls and guys just did their best. I was never told “Girls are not supposed to study this subject, or girls are not good at this subject.””
J: I feel like our generation a lot of people are going into the field of computer science now. My high school didn’t offer any computer science courses. I had to go to a technical center a few miles away. How do you feel about the state of computer science in America?
“The state of computer science in high schools across the United States is dismal. The reason is that we do not have enough teachers to teach computer science. That has to change first. A lot of high schools offer what they call ‘computer science,’ but it’s usually, at best, HTML. There’s no computer science to speak of. That’s something that has to change. You have to have passion for teaching. The pay for public school teachers is very low, and because of that, you do not have very many teachers. You also do not have teachers going into college that are qualified to pursue technical education, so they flock to less rigorous fields. There are a lot of root causes.”
“The desire to connect started early on, and that desire made me want to teach.”
A: Speaking of that passion for teaching, where did yours come from?
“I always wanted to make a difference in somebody’s life. Making this difference could be making somebody happy in their time of need, to just listen to them and be compassionate about it, or to help them in some small way. The desire to help was something I’ve always had, since childhood. The desire to teach started when I was barely eighteen at a college English institute. I had grandfathers in my class. It helped me connect with people. The desire to connect started early on, and that desire made me want to teach.”
M: With that in mind, what is your philosophy when it comes to teaching? We’ve noticed your method is to...Avoid methods. What is it that you want to convey most to your students?
“I’ve noticed throughout my years that there are two teaching philosophies. One is, let’s say you have a blank board representing the student’s initial knowledge of what you want to try to teach them. Let’s say you have a bucket of sticky blob. You reach into the bucket and throw the stick blobs
at the board, and you keep doing the same thing. These pieces of sticky blob are pieces of knowledge you are imparting. The poor student has no idea what you’re throwing at them. You keep throwing these pieces of information at them, hoping that eventually these pieces connect and create larger units of knowledge. Perhaps, maybe, they start making sense to the student. That’s one way of teaching. You may have encountered this type when you wonder to yourself, “And what is that supposed to mean? How does that relate to what we did? How and where am I supposed to store this knowledge?” Until it starts making sense. You hope that these blobs start connecting with each other until they form a network of understanding.”
“I’m interested in creating chains of knowledge.”
“Another way of teaching is to give a hook to the student, like a hook to hang a hat on. Then I give them chains of information that I want the student to hang on the hook. Then I give the students pieces that are related to other pieces. You create chains of understanding. Instead of throwing, you set some chains on the hooks. My philosophy of teaching is the second. Do not create unnecessary suffering, in other words. I give you a hook, and say “this relates to this, and this relates to this.” Students can then, by deduction, create a deeper understanding of what you give them. I’m interested in creating chains of knowledge.”
A: What is your favorite topic to teach?
“Operating systems. Without question. That’s my area of research. My area of research is multiprocessor operating systems. Not that I don’t like teaching Data Structures, but my real expertise is in operating systems, and that’s what I really enjoy.”
A: And your favorite algorithm?
“Not red-black trees. It’s a tree data structure. I always joke in my classes that I don’t teach red-black trees because every professor that I’ve known in my career who was interested in red-black trees is an old man, who came from the field of mathematics, who is not a true computer scientist, but a mathematician-turned-computer scientist. Old professors always liked red-black trees. Last semester I started joking about teaching them because I’m becoming old myself. Jokes aside, I like binomial queues. Binomial queues is a heap data structure, and what I like about it is its really neat mathematical structure, because the number of queues you can have is defined by a binomial coefficient. It’s a very organized data structure. We’ll study it later on this semester.”
A: As a long-term faculty member of OSSM, what are some changes you’d like to see, or have seen, that you like?
“I’m happy to see students have more use of their cell phones. Before that, you turned in your cellphone to the fishbowl, and you got it back when you checked out to go home. Your cellphone was just for safety for your commute home. The common thinking was that students are email-crazy, text-crazy, and if we give them their cell phones, they’ll spend all their time doing this or that. Gradually, the school realized that it could be true of the first few generations of students who were handed the cellphone, but your generation grew up with cellphones. You see it just as another technology for carrying your life. I think students use it responsibly. I’m still not sure if I want you to have your cell phone with you when you go to bed, or when you wake up. I’m happy to see the cellphone policy is more liberal than it was years past.”
“The lights out policy. I’m still not convinced it’s a good policy. I know it’s never been a policy that could be fully-enforced. I also worry that there could be that one kid who wants to sit and play videogames until four o’clock in the morning. It remains to be seen.”
Special thanks to Dr. Samadzadeh for letting us probe her mind and for lending us her time to conduct this interview. It was a true pleasure.