Amir Kamil recognized for outstanding contributions to education

Dr. Amir Kamil, lecturer in CSE, has been awarded the College of Engineering Jon R. and Beverly S. Holt Award for Excellence in Teaching for 2019-20. Kamil has shown a consistent and unrelenting commitment to bettering education in CSE and increasing access to the discipline for underrepresented populations.

In 2017, Kamil was honored with NCWIT Extension Services Transformation (NEXT) Award for his work to increase women’s participation in computing. He and a team of other faculty were recognized for their recruiting efforts of undeclared women, which included a redesign of the introductory computing course EECS 183. Retention efforts include the use of relevant and interesting course content, collaborative learning, timely feedback, and student encouragement through their first four computing courses.

Kamil’s experience as a lecturer includes frequently teaching two of those four courses, including EECS 280: Programming and Introductory Data Structures, which became the third largest course at U-M in 2017. He has also taught several other large introductory courses, including EECS 183, 285, and 376, and the upper level course EECS 490: Programming Languages.

In 2019, Kamil undertook a joint initiative with Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Valeria Bertacco and Prof. Westley Weimer to provide specialized training on inclusive teaching to all Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) and Instructional Assistants (IAs) who teach or provide other instructional support to those courses, emphasizing a number of factors that help instructors interact with students in an inclusive and equitable way. The effort focused on several of the same large, early programming courses.