When Mary Shaw earns her PhD in Computer Sciences from Carnegie Mellon in 1972, the world of information technology is just beginning to take shape. People carry slide rules rather than laptops, and those of a certain ilk keep their array of writing implements in plastic shirt-pocket protectors. Shaw embarks on her career path by joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty, hoping to teach students how to get a machine to think like a human. As she considers what will be her teaching style, she seeks guidance.

A colleague, Jon Bentley, impresses her when he reveals that his lecture notes fit on an index card. He claims that five words and short phrases are all he needs to cue him about what he will cover during his intensive classroom lectures. Meanwhile, while studying in her spare time to become a pilot, Shaw recalls how she was told about a flight course that was so tightly scripted, one instructor could leave the room and another come in and pick up where the class left off without missing a word of the prepackaged material. She chose not to take that class and not to teach like that, either.

Her professors based their pedagogical methods on The Carnegie Plan, a set of guidelines developed in the 1940s under President Robert Doherty. The plan urges that engineers be taught to think independently so they can create practical solutions to problems they face in the communities they serve. That principle influences Shaw, even today, who says it's vital to "remember where we came from." As proof, a four-foot-long, bright-yellow wood slide rule is still a part of her ultra-modern Wean Hall office.

Her teaching approach has earned her impressive recognition. Last spring, she received the IEEE Computer Society's Distinguished Educator Award "for outstanding contributions to the development of innovative curricula in computer science," as well as the Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education.
-Judi Vitale (HS'78)

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Carnegie Mellon's Mary Shaw Receives IEEE Award for Software Engineering Education