CS Student Wins Teaching Assistant Award

On behalf of the School of Computer Science Awards and Scholarships Committee, we’re happy to announce that student Chris Katsaras was awarded the Teaching Assistant Award (2018).

Chris received the award in recognition of his outstanding contributions as a teaching assistant on campus. The nomination package, written by Dr. Ritu Chaturvedi and several faculty members from the School of Computer Science summarizes Chris as follows:

"Chris was a pleasure to with. He was extremely organized and dedicated to his work. He was very helpful at our weekly meetings and was proactive in every task that he was given.  Chris got a great deal of satisfaction from teaching the labs that he did, which was again evident by the rapport he shared with his students. A couple of his students wrote letters of support for him citing how much an influence Chris was in their pursuit of learning programming."

Fellow students also spoke very highly of Chris:

"Chris made it his personal goal to make sure all students who shared his passion of Computer Science would have a captivating, engaging, and interesting experience learning about programming and software engineering. On numerous occasions, Chris stayed long after he was required to during his office hours, helping students complete their assignments, but also to help them gain a deep understanding of their classwork, and why it was important."

"He is outstanding at balancing how much he’ll help you versus pushing you to learn something new. Instead of giving me the direct answer to my question, he would drop a clue and encourage you to figure it out on your own. This really helped build my independence and contributed to a stronger foundation in computer science. The best part about Chris was his ability to have fun during both lab and office hours. He always found a way to lighten the mood while we were grinding out assignments during his office hours. During labs, Chris got to know his students and tailored his teaching towards each individual whether that be checking in on them to see if they need help or by challenging them with more difficult problems."

Congratulations on your award, Chris! Well deserved!