McMillan named outstanding teacher by ASEE

Collin McMillan, associate professor of computer science and engineering, has been named the 2019 Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Illinois/Indiana section of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE).

The award recognizes an engineering educator for excellence in classroom performance and contributions to the scholarship of teaching.

McMillan’s research interests are at the intersection of software engineering and natural language processing. In 2015, he developed a unique collaborative software engineering education program that involves Notre Dame undergraduates, graduate students, and students at the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired (ISVI) and the Indiana School for the Blind.

“After talking with the faculty, it became clear that a course of this kind was needed. It could be used to build and evaluate tools to help programmers with visual impairments navigate source code — as well as provide Notre Dame engineering students with a unique teaching-learning experience in computer science.”

— Collin McMillan, associate professor of computer science and engineering

McMillan first engaged with ISVI as part of his research related to his 2015 National Science Foundation Early Career Development award project titled “Understanding Program Comprehension for Automated Software Documentation Generation.”

“After talking with the faculty, it became clear that a course of this kind was needed,” said McMillan. “It could be used to build and evaluate tools to help programmers with visual impairments navigate source code — as well as provide Notre Dame engineering students with a unique teaching-learning experience in computer science.

We’ve been offering the course ever since.”

— Nina Welding, College of Engineering