Contact info

Spring 2012

I'm teaching one of my all-time favorites, CS107, with an awesome staff of veteran CAs. It is sure to be a great quarter!
My regular hours will be Monday 2:05pm-3:30 and Thursday 10:30am-12:30pm. (Check cs107 for any changes in schedule). You are also welcome to drop by and check if I'm free or you can send email to set up an appointment.

An ode

To the student who missed lecture and asks did I miss anything?

A little bio

I left my rural hometown of Stevinson, CA (population: 262) to come to Stanford as a wide-eyed freshman in 1985. My undergraduate tour of duty included SLE, LSJUMB, a year on leave, RAing, a sleep debt I still owe on, the beginning of life-long friendships, near-constant self-doubt, moments (brief) of glory, and, finally, a Mathematical Sciences degree. My love of building things lead to my first job as a software engineer at NeXT. We had an incredible team, awesome technology, and a whole lot of fun. NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1997 and I continued on as a consulting engineer until 2002. Having one super-cool job apparently wasn't enough for me, as I also began teaching in the Stanford CS department in 1992 and I plan to stay here until death do we part. :-) I teach courses in the undergrad systems curriculum, including programming methodology and abstractions, language paradigms, computer systems, compilers, and object-oriented design and development, but I especially enjoy working with the section leaders in the CS106 courses. I have been the advisor to the Stanford SWE and ACM-W chapters and recently served on the Computer Science Advanced Placement development committee, writing and grading an exam for 20,000 students nationwide. A quarter's worth of my CS106B lectures have been unleashed as a part of Stanford Engineering Everywhere, the beginnings of a project to provide a Stanford-quality education to all seekers. Right now, I'm having great fun leading the "new CS107", the second course in the systems core of the new undergrad major.

Advising

Thinking about declaring CS or CSE? The CS Undergrad Advising site has excellent information about the major, the minor, declaring, advising, and so on. The UAL site for a great wealth of resrouces and information for undergrads of all persuasions.

My CS undergraduate advising group is now big enough that I'm in danger of losing track of everyone so I'm currently not recruiting new advisees, but anyone, advisee or not, is welcome to come by and ask questions of me.

My life

I'm married to Matt Vaska, medical device engineer, entrepeneur and all-around superhero. Part of his wooing involved a trombone serenade in the Flo Mo courtyard. We are the proud parents of two awesome little guys: our 3rd grader Rein and 1st grader Kalev. They attend the Spanish Immersion elementary here on Stanford campus.