Kathleen McKeown is the Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. She was also the Founding Director of Columbia's Data Science Institute, a position she held from July 2012 to June 2017. She served as Department Chair from 1998-2003 and was Vice Dean for Research for the School of Engineering and Applied Science for two years. At Columbia she was the first woman tenured in the Engineering School, started the Women in Computer Sciences Student Group, and was the first female Computer Sciences Chair. Before arriving at Columbia, she received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982.
Oral History Highlights
By high school, did you know what you wanted to do after you graduated?
I knew I wanted to go to college. I knew that. Did I know more? I thought I wanted to major in math, and I remember being very angry at our math teacher because, so we had a class that was nine students, seven girls and two boys, and he would say to the boys, "Who wants to major in math?" I felt very left out of that conversation. The assumption was no. And I remember also with the same teacher, I had applied to National Science Foundation summer programs in math to go at the end of my junior year, and again talking to him, he told me he didn't think I would get in, so I also was very angry at him about that. I did, I got into every one. So yeah.