A New Education Chair + Committee
Duncan Brumby is the incoming Chair of the SIGCHI Education committee — an ad hoc committee that seeks to provide guidance on and advance HCI Education within SIGCHI. He brings to this role his experience as Professor of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) at University College London (UCL), where he has been the Director of the HCI MSc program since 2016. He has also taught on numerous international summer schools for PhD students on HCI research skills training and has led courses on applying quantitative and qualitative methods in HCI research at CHI 2015, ’16, ’17. He was a Doctoral Consortium (DC) chair at CHI 2020, leading the unexpected but successful pivot to online delivery (read about that experience here: https://doi.org/10.1145/3404201), and was a faculty mentor at the CHI 2023 DC. In terms of background — he received his PhD in Psychology from Cardiff University in 2005 and has previously held appointments at Drexel University (post-doc), Georgia Tech (visiting professor), Microsoft Research (research intern), and PARC (research intern).
The objectives for the SIGCHI Education committee in the coming four years are threefold. First, increase the visibility and recognition of excellence in HCI education within our community. To achieve formal pathways to recognise outstanding contribution to HCI education will be explored (i.e., awards). Second, it is vital that HCI educators have a venue that practice and knowledge can be shared. To achieve we shall continue to support and develop the EduCHI symposia, which bring together HCI educators across disciplinary and geographical borders to discuss, dissect, and debate HCI teaching and learning. This event has been held at CHI most years and provides an excellent forum for discussion and presentation of excellent practices in HCI education. Third, as demand for HCI education increases and new programmes are developed at institutions to meet this demand, there are opportunities to formally support the development process by setting up mechanisms to pair experts within our community with those seeking their input.
As a first step, the formation of a new committee will take place during Fall 2023. Those interested will be invited to apply using our Open Call for Volunteers on SIGCHI.submittable.com. Stay tuned!
