Michelle Craig joined the University of Toronto in 1990 and is currently an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream and Associate Chair, Undergraduate in the Department of Computer Science. She earned her BASc in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo and her MSc in Computer Science at Toronto.

Professor Craig’s classroom is full of life and activity. Her students do not sit passively and simply observe a lecture, instead she provides them with small exercises or activities and opportunities for discussion. In order to invert her second-year course and to encourage other instructors to do the same, she led a team of colleagues to produce a publicly available set of over 125 videos and over 200 exercises on C and Systems Programming.

Recognizing that students learn through engaging with the material, Professor Craig is passionate about the importance of quality assignments. Two of her original assignments have won international recognition and have been used around the globe. She also recognizes the need to customize computer science education for different audiences. She coordinated the cross-Canada Undergraduate Capstone Open-Source Projects (UCOSP) program to train promising software developers, the Computing for Medicine program to introduce computing to medical students, and the Gr8 Designs for Gr8 Girls outreach program to encourage young women to consider careers in computing.

In addition to fulfilling her primary responsibilities teaching undergraduate students and developing curricula, Professor Craig has collaborated on over 35 publications in computer science education. Her research touches on many computer science education topics including flipped classrooms, assessment, online education, exam wrappers and software engineering education. She applies scholarly rigor to evaluate the efficacy of different teaching interventions and uses these studies as opportunities to teach undergraduate students about the research process.

Professor Craig serves on the board of the ACM Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) and is a co Editor-in-Chief of an expanding journal focused on instructional materials for teaching introductory computer science.

Professor Craig has been recognized as an ACM Distinguished Educator. She has won the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Faculty of Arts & Science, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) teaching award, and a Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.