Q&A with Jamie Payton, New Dean of Ying Wu College of Computing

Jamie Payton is the new dean of NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing. She met with NJIT News for a Q&A session about her views on computing education and questions about current events in computing. The following transcript is lightly edited for clarity.

Her Roadmap to NJIT

NJIT News: Northern New Jersey is incredibly dense and diverse. How do you like it here so far?

Jamie Payton: I do really like it! I've lived in Philadelphia for a number of years. I really understand that style of interaction. One of the things I found — I grew up in Oklahoma — it's a very different style of interaction there. But one of the things that I really love about living in the Northeast and in cities like Newark and Philly is this underdog mentality. I love that. I've been an underdog, and so that really resonates with me. The other thing too is that people here may not always have the super-friendly, howdy-y'all demeanor that you might find in Oklahoma, but they're genuine.

NJIT News: Do you ever program just for fun?

Jamie Payton: Sometimes. I have supervised undergraduate research students for the last 12 years, and every summer we hosted undergraduate students. That's the time when I do the most amount of programming. And so typically, what we're doing is working on relatively simple activity recognition algorithms that use physical activity data and often in an educational context. The most recent thing I've been working on is developing really simple machine learning packages that can be incorporated into Microsoft MakeCode, a visual programming language for elementary and middle school students that work with the Micro:bit, a small battery-operated sensor. Those are about $20 each, and so we created this little package for activity recognition that middle school students can use to basically integrate with their physical education. They will wear these sensors on their wrist or on their ankle during PE. The gym teacher collaborates with a classroom teacher around the data — steps, heart rate, all that stuff — and so they do a little bit of data analysis, and then we start working on that activity recognition part, where they can do jumping jacks and they can run and jump and skip. They start looking at pattern recognition and stuff. So yeah, mostly Python stuff, a little bit of machine learning.

NJIT News: What's your favorite language?

Jamie Payton: I think probably my favorite language is C++. It was the very first programming language that I learned how to use.

NJIT News: But you learned BASIC on your childhood Coleco Adam.

Jamie Payton: I just knew what BASIC was on my Coleco. C++ is the first programming language that I learned as an undergraduate student, so I have a strong affinity for that. I do really like Java because it does all the garbage collection for you. And that was one of the hardest things. You know, memory leaks are a mess.

NJIT News: Mac, Windows or Linux?

Jamie Payton: I'm definitely a Mac user. I've been a Mac user for about 20 years now.

NJIT News: Mac is the best Unix shell there is.

Jamie Payton: That's right.

NJIT News: What are your hobbies or interests outside computing?

Jamie Payton: I really like to read. So literature and fiction. I like memoirs. I also like to work out. And I am a part of what I call my workout cult. We typically meet at 6 A.M. and do something that I call old people CrossFit. It's not quite as competitive as young-people CrossFit. I like to watch sports.

NJIT News: Who do you root for?

Jamie Payton: The Eagles. I'm sorry, New York fans. My son is a huge fan. Maybe don't put that in the article! For baseball, the Cardinals. And then for basketball, I still have a soft spot for the Bulls. They were the team when I was growing up, and I just always root for them.

NJIT News: Favorite band or singer?

Jamie Payton: I listen to a wide variety of music. I don't know that I have a favorite. I find myself listening to a lot of sort of old school R&B music. I still listen to the radio station in the car, and I'll listen to the pop music station. I think when it comes to artists that I like and admire, I really like the domination that Beyonce has in the music industry. I admire old school music. I listen to a lot of Stevie Nicks. So it’s a wide variety of music.

Computing in Higher Education

NJIT News: Let's do some serious questions now. Tell us about STARS and its origins.

Jamie Payton: STARS Computing Corps is a broadening participation in computing alliance. It's funded by the National Science Foundation. It was established in 2006 and it was one of originally about six broadening participation in computing alliances across the country. STARS originally stood for Southeast Technical Alliance for students in Academics and Research. And then as it expanded to be a national alliance, it was Students and Technology for Academics, Research and Service.

NJIT News: And when you say broadening access, so who is the target?

Jamie Payton: I'm glad you asked, because a lot of people think broadening participation means just bringing more students together, but it's really an effort that focuses on increasing the representation of students that have been traditionally excluded and marginalized. STARS focuses on college students, and it focuses on persistence and trying to increase graduation rates to be at parity for students from the majority.

NJIT News: How did you get involved and do you still lead it today?

Jamie Payton: In 2014 both founders were moving on to other positions, and I had been working and being a part of and participating in STARS. They were looking for new leadership and I was really interested in the mission. I was one year away from going out for tenure and promotion, and so they kind of hesitated to reach out and asked me to take on this director role, thinking that I really needed to focus on promotion and tenure, but I was really eager to do it, and I'm so glad that I said yes. One of the things that I really love about STARS is the community of people, it's a national network of faculty and students, and it really serves as a learning community. So when I don't know something, I have a whole collection of people that I can reach out to, it's great for recruiting students to different programs. It's great for, you know, propagating approaches that work really well. And, yes, I’m still leading STARS today!

NJIT News: Has NJIT ever been involved?

Jamie Payton: No, but I hope that we will be. We're going to headquarter the STARS Computing Corps here at NJIT.

NJIT News: What do you like best, or least, about how CS is taught today versus when you were a student?

Jamie Payton: I think what I like the most about how CS is taught today is that there's an increasing awareness of how computing is really central to solving problems across disciplines, and there's more of an emphasis on problem solving and teaching that, as part of the curriculum. That's one thing that I really appreciate about how the curriculum and our approach to teaching the curriculum has changed. There's more of an emphasis on looking at impacts of the work that we're doing in computing, and looking at how computing can be used to solve really important societal problems or scientific problems and other disciplines. I think that's a positive change. I think we have made some progress on integrating more inclusive approaches to teaching computing, but we have a long way to go to have a really broadly-serving and equitable approach to teaching computing.

NJIT News: Could you give an example?

Jamie Payton: One of the things that we should be doing at universities is thinking about how our students are prepared for their life ahead of them. Often it's the case in computing degree programs that students are told that they should work on projects outside of class, that they should develop their portfolio entirely outside of class, that they should do tech interview prep outside of class, that they should do Leet code problems outside of class. But I think that those kinds of approaches can be integrated into the curriculum so that students have dedicated time to work on those professional skills, so that we can have computing theory and advancement and research that is well aligned with modern industry practices, and make that part of our classroom teaching. Not every university has a how-to-prepare for-the-interview course. How do you explain why a problem is important to someone? You're going to have to explain to a manager what the technical issue is. And if you can't convey to your manager what that technical issue is, they're not going to understand you, and you're not going to be able to move forward, or have the resources that you need to solve the problem. And so I really think it's about technical communication, code reviews and understanding how to give criticism and feedback on technical computing problems that sometimes we miss, including in our training of students. And that's important not just for industry jobs, but it's important for preparing students for research pathways and for advancing computing.

NJIT News: How do you balance old but still important topics like COBOL, and new ones that are important but maybe just trendy like Rust, versus what the cautious accreditation bodies require that we have to teach?

Jamie Payton: I think one of the things that we can do is to really keep a strong focus on the fundamental theory of programming language concepts, and therefore these are transferable skills.

NJIT News: Beyond computer science, we also teach and research data science, informatics, and information technology here. What's your view of where that's going in education?

Jamie Payton: I'm really excited that we're a College of Computing that has a broad focus on computing as a whole. I think it's incredibly important that we look at the different types of problems that we can solve with computing-focused solutions, and how we get advances in those fields. Informatics in particular, you look at the importance of thinking about explainable AI and human-AI interaction. Those are topics that are going to be incredibly important. Cybersecurity is another. Virtual reality is incredibly important. Lots of emerging and really critical areas there.

NJIT News: Your Ph.D. thesis was, “A query-centric approach to supporting the development of context-aware allocation for mobile ad-hoc networks.” What does that mean, and 18 years later what is its relevance?

Jamie Payton: I started working on this research back in the day before laptops by default had Wi-Fi cards, you had a PCMCIA slot where you could plug in an external Wi-Fi card or a network card, and Wi-Fi base stations weren't proliferated either. And so the question at the time was, could we form these dynamic mesh networks by using Wi-Fi signals as devices came within range of each other, and what kinds of applications could be supported with that? And so you can easily imagine, in those times, emergency search-and-rescue operations, or wildlife habitat monitoring that was in remote locations. So lots of different promising applications for that. The challenge though, was because it was such a dynamic network, traditional routing protocols didn't work. You couldn't just say, send this from A to B, because the path between A to B would rapidly change. And the existing routing algorithms generated way too much traffic, as those links would break and then reconnect and reform. So over time, there were definitely new types of routing protocols that were developed. We see emerging types of interactions with devices. We really saw a lot of the last mile connectivity to the core network. And so those kinds of discoveries are still relevant and really lay a foundation for higher-level applications. There are these Internet-of-things devices, and so all that work, even back from 1997, is really relevant for managing smaller networks.

NJIT News: What was it like during your undergrad years in computer science at the University of Tulsa?

Jamie Payton: Interesting. Within the entire degree program, there were a total of three women. One of the faculty members in computer science was a woman, and she was the reason why I ended up choosing to go there. She called me at home and invited me to join the undergraduate research program, and to join her research lab and work with her. I was a senior in high school, and they selected students based on test scores. That's how I got the phone call. My parents were super excited. I was a first-generation college student, and so it was incredibly exciting to my parents that a professor would call and invite me to come.

NJIT News: You were Young Sheldon.

Jamie Payton: That's what it felt like! It was quite special. And you know, I did get to work in her research lab from the time I was a freshman student. I had no idea before then what research was like, and I just really loved it. It combined all the things that I loved. I loved computer science, I loved writing, I loved telling a story, I liked collaboration, and research was all of those things. And so I was really fortunate that I got an early introduction into that, and it gave me a good little community in the program to work with, because I was working with graduate students on their research projects and meeting other students.

Looking to the Future

NJIT News: What are your ideas for increasing Ying Wu enrollment among minorities and disadvantaged people?

Jamie Payton: The research literature tells us that there are several things that we can and should be doing. One is looking at having more inclusive practices within the ways that we teach and the ways that we create community for students. There are lots of great student organizations here at Ying Wu, and so I hope that more students will get involved in that and create those networks and communities. Those are really effective, along with having relationships with the broadening participation and computing alliances across the country. Providing identity-aligned approaches for students is important. You do that by building relationships and trust, and also creating spaces and programs that align with motivations, interests and assets of students, and that respect and value their cultural background and their authentic contributions. In order to recruit Black faculty and Hispanic faculty to join us in YWCC, I do think the relationships that we build, the kind of culture that we have, the position that we have in a large, major city that is culturally rich and diverse — those are things that can work in our favor. We really have to establish the relationships and establish a reputation for having a culture that is inclusive.

NJIT News: How do you think computing education will be different in five years now, with the AI effect?

Jamie Payton: I do think that we will see more courses offered that are around AI literacy, focusing on concepts and the use and application of those tools, and those may be for not only computing-focused students, but really broadly for everyone. I think we'll see more curricula that are integrations of other disciplines with concepts around AI, and how those concepts and computational problem solving with AI can be applied to that discipline. I think you'll just see a lot more creativity and emergence of AI-focused curriculum.

NJIT News: Artificial intelligence can be used for cheating and taking shortcuts, right? In the AI checkers, there are false positives and they’re unreliable. How do we navigate that?

Jamie Payton: I think there are a lot of conversations about this, and I don't have all the answers, but I do think maybe it requires us to rethink grading. Because a lot of times, it's my perception that students will turn in something that comes from ChatGPT, because they're under pressure to submit something for a grade. And if we can try to shift the ways that we apply that pressure, or the ways students perceive that pressure, and try a different approach to learning and engagement, then maybe it will reduce some of the tendencies to reach out for the use of tools when they're not allowed. Leo Porter [a well-known computing education expert at the University of California - San Diego] has this approach where he's intentionally using Microsoft Copilot and other tools to teach undergraduate students Python. The learning outcomes that he's seeing are really positive. The students have better problem-solving outcomes. And if you look at the comparison to students who aren't using this approach, the ones who are using AI have just as much knowledge on the core concepts around programming.

NJIT News: How do you personally use AI?

Jamie Payton: I've used ChatGPT for several purposes! For example, we had this request to summarize prior work for a project, and we'd written eight papers on this project. We gave ChatGPT these eight papers, and said, ‘Can you provide a summary that highlights them and provide our first draft for us?’ So that's one way, but I've also used ChatGPT for doing some computational problem solving. I wanted to see how capable it was of writing simple programs. Even if I had a task that took separate pieces of data, I could have written the script myself, but I was seeing what ChatGPT could do, and there's some things that it won't do for you. This is the most recent task that I asked for it to do: I had a list of institutions, I wanted to create a GIS map of where those institutions were, and I wanted them to have different types of pins on the map based on color. But I only had the institution's names and their state. ChatGPT would not allow you to get the physical addresses and the coordinates, because there had been concerns about spamming these institutions.

NJIT News: Do you want to teach anything?

Jamie Payton: Oh yeah, I would love to teach a class. I've taught operating systems and distributed algorithms in the past. I really love teaching both of those courses, operating systems in particular, because it brings together lots of different topics that students learn in computing and computer science. And they wonder, why am I going to need to know this? And then in operating systems, it kind of all comes together. Architecture, programming languages, theory, it all kind of comes together in operating systems.

NJIT News: What else do you want people to know about you?

Jamie Payton: That I am really excited about creativity and new ideas, and being open to new ways of seeing and using computing and advancing computing research. I am looking forward to getting to know more about the faculty research that's going on here. I'm highly collaborative, so I welcome faculty ideas, and look forward to improving processes and policies and really supporting students. I have a focus on continuous improvement. I’m excited when we see success in trying a new approach. That's really awesome.