Colleen Van Lent

Dr. Colleen van Lent is a Teaching Professor and Lecturer IV at the University of Michigan School of Information, where she teaches various technology-oriented courses including introductory programming and Web development. Colleen's previous jobs include Associate Professor at California State University and positions at NASA JPL, the Naval Research Lab, and the NSA. She received her BS from Kent State University Honors College in Computer Science, and an MS and PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, also in Computer Science. Her thesis was on Artificial Intelligence applications on the Nursebot Project, a robotic assistant for the elderly. Her honors include being chosen as a National Physical Sciences Consortium Fellow and a NASA Faculty Fellow. Colleen has always emphasized the idea of technology for everybody. To that end she has worked creating courses for education majors to learn robotics, as well other CS curriculum for non-majors. She enjoys working with elementary and middle school students to learn problem-solving, coding, and design. She has published eight children's books on HTML and Scratch programming.