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General & Contact Information

Instructor Name: Dr. Emily Thomforde

Preferred name: Em

Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers

I am a middle-aged white woman with brown curly hair and glasses

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

Office Hours by Appointment: calend.ly/doctorem

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.