It is with a profound sense of humility and gratitude that I find myself in a position to announce my first major award as a tenure-track Computer Science professor at the Colorado School of Mines. I have received a $260,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation titled "Expanding Models of Delivery for Online Spiritual Care." …
GenAI on Campus: What Students Really Think—From Curiosity to Catastrophe
Written By: Jesan Ahammed Ovi (My PhD Student in Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines) As Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, DALL·E, and GitHub Copilot rapidly enter classrooms and labs, one question looms large: How are students actually using them—and how do they feel about it? Our study at the Colorado School of …
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CaringBridge and the Science of Spiritual Support: Lessons from Professor Estelle Smith’s Research with CaringBridge Since 2016
Thinking about taking this survey (10-15 min.) about online spiritual care communities? Here’s some of the history that has inspired this research! Way back in 2016, Estelle Smith was a brand new Computer Science PhD student at the University of Minnesota. Coincidentally, that was the same time period when a new scientific collaboration team was …
How are Students Using Generative AI at the Colorado School of Mines? And What is Mines Doing about it?
In May 2023, I led a research team including about a dozen students, along with several professors and administrators from across campus to launch a survey of all students at the Colorado School of Mines. The goal was to understand how Generative AI had been adopted across engineering education. The survey was taken by over …
Links to External Blog Posts
Thanks for checking out my blog! I'll periodically update this post to add links to external blog posts as I make them. 2023 “Thoughts & Prayers” or “💗 & 🙏”: How A New Reactions Bar Reshapes Supportive Communication During Health Crises. For ACM CSCW on Medium. 2022 Introducing the GOV-BOTs psychometric scale for measuring users’ …
Why You Should Twitter if You Science
Before I began to use Twitter [which is equivalent to, before I became an academic], I used to hate on it. Why would I waste my time with one more endless feed of information and random chit-chat? However, if you are a scientist, then by the nature of the work you do, you must be …
Here’s How You Run a Fun & Engaging Virtual Event
With a little help from my friends, I've been running a lot of virtual events for our Graduate Student Association lately. *sigh* COVID times. But before there was COVID, we were still putting on virtual events. Why? An online community can have many benefits to support offline communities IRL. It can help organize people to …
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10 Things You Need to Know if You’re a Computer Science Graduate Student
In 2019, a friend of mine thought I might enjoy being President of our department’s Graduate Student Association (GSA), so he nominated me without telling me. When I first saw my name on the ballot, my internal reaction was something like, “Awwwwwwww HELL no. Who did this?” When I was subsequently elected, my second internal …
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The World’s Best Protein Bar
Life is a dream. A thread of experiences, woven in a veil, delicate and beautiful. I would not lift it from my eyes, nor could I. Not three days ago, after ascending the fearful but glorious Incan granite that leads to the peak of Wayna Picchu, I arrive to the summit. A winded mess. There, …
Losing Mom, Finding Spirituality
[Cross-posted from CaringBridge.org, originally published June 2019. Photo Caption: My mom gave me this golden heart-shaped locket when I was child. Her photo is on the left, mine is on the right. This photo of her holding the locket was taken shortly after she passed away of uterine cancer in 2015.] You can never know …
C. Estelle Smith, Ph.D. 