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General & Contact Information
Instructor Name: Dr. Emily Thomforde Preferred name: Em Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
Educational Background: Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics, Swarthmore College PhD Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh
What I value: Quiet time in nature Mentorship Learning from mistakes Dismantling systems of oppression The power to make what I need instead of buying it ❤️❤️ Teachers ❤️❤️
Instructor Email: ethomforde@reach.edu

Instructor Bio

Dr. Emily Thomforde is the Faculty Lead for Computer Sciences at Reach University. She focuses on culturally sustaining pedagogy and making connections between computing and other disciplinary areas. She runs the weekly CSEdResarch.org Discussion Group, the Bay Area Youth Computer Science Council, and AIforCA. When not teaching teachers, she can be found at her local library makerspace building robots with children. Emily previously served as Computer Science Coordinator at the California Department of Education and San Mateo County Office of Education. She is a BAFTA-winning video game developer, and has nine years of experience teaching computer programming, software development and computing pedagogy at libraries, prisons, museums, and public schools locally and abroad. Her curriculum development credits include Vidcode, Hopscotch, Code.org, STEM from Dance, Code Combat, and BrainPOP. Emily holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK.