Fun

I am married to Jack Carroll, who is a Distinguished Professor of IST and Director of the Center for HCI. We co-direct a research lab, often co-supervise students, and work on many other projects together. Amazingly enough, we have been together and collaborating on research since we were both at IBM Research in the early ’80s.

We have one daughter, Erin Carroll, who graduated with Honors from Penn State in 2010, with a major in Sociology, and two minors in IST and Community Engagement. She spent three years as a kindergarten, pre-school and first-grade teacher at two different schools in downtown San Antonio, as part of Teach for America, a national program that prepares and places recent college graduates in low-performing urban schools. In 2013-14, she earned an Masters in Education Policy and Management from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. She is now working as a policy analyst for the Early Childhood Division of the Louisiana State Department of Education, tasked with defining and implementing a new program for helping the state’s large number of daycare providers to serve pre-K education needs. Needless to say, we’re very proud of her!

My family also includes a non-human. After 15.5 years, we had to say good-bye to our yellow lab Kerby, but our second lab is doing her best to do the work of two dogs! She loves her 5:30AM walks with me each week day, but even more the weekend hikes with Jack in the Pennsylvania Game Lands.

Other Stuff

Singing much of the year in my church’s Chancel Choir. Thanks to Ned we sing an amazing variety of works, have lots of fun learning them, and usually sound pretty good!

I love to travel, especially abroad, and especially with Jack. Some of my favorite places are England, Scotland, Mexico, and Spain. Lucky for me I was on sabbatical in Spain for January-July 2010, visiting the University Carlos III of Madrid. Sad to say, my Rosetta Stone never worked out, so still no hablo espanol…

Sports, Sports, and more Sports:

1. A dedicated fan of the Penn State Nittany Lions, every sport, every season, all year long! No matter what, WE ARE… …Penn State!!
2. Rooting for the Yankees, who have never figured out how to get a great pitching team, but continue to keep it interesting even so.
3. A founding fan(!) for the State College Spikes, a minor league “short season” team that shares the fantastic Medlar Field at Lubrano Park with Penn State’s baseball team. I love Ike-the-Spike and Bob the Baseball Dog!
4. Still cheering on the Virginia Tech Hokies. It was sad to see Coach Beamer end his tenure there, but they are always a blast to watch.
5. I will never give up on the New York Giants – and for my patience they rewarded me mightily at Super Bowl XLII and XLIV! You just never know with those Giants.