Professor Richert Wang receives Faculty Career Development Award!

By Natalia Diaz Amabilis, PR Assistant 

Congratulations to UCSB’s Professor Richert Wang for being awarded the Faculty Career Development Award (FCDA), which provides eligible junior faculty the opportunity to strengthen their records in research and other creative activity by providing funds to enable them to spend uninterrupted time pursuing research interests or independent study. Professor Richert Wang is a joint Assistant Teaching Professor between the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Computing in the College of Creative Studies.

The award program is specifically geared toward non-tenured faculty who, because of the nature of their position or their role in campus affairs, have encountered significant obstacles in pursuit of their research, creative work, teaching, service, or mentoring obligations, or who have made unusually time-consuming efforts in helping to achieve campus diversity. Wang’s FCDA application highlighted the responsibilities he had to take on, both in the College of Creative Studies and the Computer Science Department, due to a colleague's medical leave in Winter and Spring 2019. 

Wang’s project proposal, Coding Community is an online, inclusive, and active learning environment for coding classes that connects a diverse population of students across different campuses that has previously been awarded by the California Education Learning Lab Seed Grant. The Coding Community will leverage students’ contemporary perspectives to communicate concepts with examples and explanations that their peers can relate to. Under-represented students will record tutorial videos to explain coding concepts in their own words. Coding Community will organize videos by topic, paired with interactive coding problems.

Congratulations Professor Richert Wang, UCSB is excited to see another excellent faculty’s continued success in academia!