Susan Rodger is a Professor of the Practice in the Computer Science Department at Duke University where she has been since 1994. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 1989 to 1994. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University in 1989. Prof. Rodger works in the areas of visualization and interaction, and computer science education. The main projects she has major contributions in are visualization and interaction software for education in theoretical computer science, computing in K-12 and peer-led team learning.
Prof. Rodger received the ACM Distinguished Educator award in 2006 and she was one of two finalist candidates for the NEEDS Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware for the software JFLAP (mentioned below). Rodger has written one book and over forty journal and conference publications. Rodger's research has been supported by eleven National Science Foundation grants totaling over 6 million, five IBM Faculty Awards, and other funding from IBM, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard for a total funding of approximately 10 million. Rodger is currently a board member and secretary of ACM SIGCSE, a board member of CRA-W, and a member of the ACM Education Policy Committee. She was the chair of the AP Computer Science Development Committee from 1997-2000 and a member of the AP Computer Science Development Committee from 1995-2001. She has been involved with the SIGCSE Symposium in many ways including co-Chair for SIGCSE 2008, Program co-chair for SIGCSE 2007, Panels and Special Sessions Chair for SIGCSE 2005, and Supporter/Exhibitor Liason since 2008. She has organized two Alice Symposiums and over thirty workshops on Alice, JFLAP, Peer-led Team learning, career mentoring for faculty, and other computer science education topics. She has supervised over sixty undergraduates and fifteen masters students in research projects and co-advised one Ph.D. student.
Prof. Rodger has developed JFLAP, software for experimenting with formal languages and automata, for more than twenty years with over thirty-five students. Prof. Rodger started developing software tools for the area of formal languages and automata in 1991. The first tool developed was NPDA, then expanding into FLAP (Formal Languages and Automata Package) with Finite State Machines, NPDA and Turing Machines. Many related tools were developed along the way such as JeLLRap, LLparse, PumpLemma, and Pate. In 1996, the FLAP software was converted to Java and renamed JFLAP.
With JFLAP one can build and experiment with several types of automata (finite state machine, pushdown automata, multi-tape Turing machine, Moore and Mealy machines), regular expressions and several types of grammars (regular, context-free, and unrestricted). One can experiment with proofs such as NFA to DFA, DFA to minimal state DFA, NPDA to CFG, CFG to NPDA, etc. One can experiment with parsing algorithms including brute-force, LL(1), SLR(1), and CYK. Additionally, one can experiment with L-systems and pumping lemmas for both regular and context-free languages.
JFLAP is the leading educational tool for formal languages and automata theory and is used around the world in several types of courses including formal languages and automata, compilers, artificial intelligence, and discrete mathematics. In 2006 JFLAP had already been downloaded from over 160 countries. Here is a list of schools and other statistics on its use in 2008. JFLAP 6.1 was recognized as one of two finalist candidates in the NEEDS Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware competition in 2007. Here is the press release, and the submission packet that contains letters from over 60 faculty in support of JFLAP. From the jflap.org page are listed 9 books that use JFLAP in some way including Rodger and her student Thomas Finley's book entitled "JFLAP - An Interactive Formal Languages and Automata Package", published in 2006. Also listed on jflap.org are over fifteen JFLAP papers written by Rodger, and over twenty-five papers written by others that use JFLAP in some way such as modifying it or using it in a class. In Rodger's 2009 SIGCSE paper she describes a two-year study on JFLAP with fourteen universities that shows the majority of students felt that having access to JFLAP made learning course concepts easier, made them feel more engaged in the course and made the course more enjoyable. The JFLAP project has been supported by five National Science Foundation grants.
Rodger has also done work in algorithm animation, creating the scripting language JAWAA to easily create animations over the web. With JAWAA one can animate both primitive shapes and data structures such as arrays, lists, stacks and queues.
Prof. Rodger is a leader in integrating computing into K-12 using the Alice 3-D virtual worlds programming environment. The Adventures in Alice Programming project has been supported by National Science Foundation ITEST and ITEST Scale-up grants totaling 3.8 million dollars with additional support from IBM. She has run over fifteen Alice Workshops or Symposiums from two-days to three weeks, with the largest Symposium having over 120 attendees. She has taught Alice in one-week to three-week workshops to over 200 K-12 teachers. She has developed free curriculum materials targetted to middle school and high school that includes over 60 tutorial topics on programming and animation. At her two-week or longer workshops, K-12 teachers have developed lesson plans that include a sample Alice world that are also available for free. Teachers attending the workshops are in a wide range of disciplines including mathematics, science, language arts, history, music, art, foreign language, english as second language, business technology, computer applications and physical education. She has supervised over 15 undergraduate student projects on Alice and integrating computing into K-12 disciplines.
Prof. Rodger is a leader in integrating peer-led team learning (PLTL) into computer science and was part of a collaborative effort with seven other universities that resulted in the pltlcs.org website, curriculum materials on PLTL CS, and four workshops on PLTL including one two-day workshop held at Duke University in 2007 with 73 participants. This project was supported by an NSF ITWF grant.