Elva Jones

Last updated January 14, 2025

Elva Johnson Jones is a professor and founding chair of the Department of Computer Science at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), a position she has held since 1991.^[1]

Early life and background

Elva Johnson Jones was born and raised on a tobacco farm in Louisburg, North Carolina. Her parents are Bettie and Sanford Jones and she has three siblings. She married Emory Jones, an alumnus and former WSSU faculty member; they had one son, Eugene who graduated from WSSU. Jones is a first-generation college student who came from a household which was supportive of her educational endeavors. Her parents did not have the opportunity to attend college, but they sacrificed the first harvest of every year's crop to pay tuition. She followed in the footsteps of her older sister to attend WSSU.^[2]

Education

Jones earned her B.A. degree in business from Winston-Salem State University in 1970 before computer science was offered there. She then went on to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she earned her Master's in operations research. She went to Raleigh, North Carolina where she became the first African-American to obtain a doctorate in engineering and computer science from North Carolina State University.^[2]

Career and research

Jones continued to work at WSSU while enrolled at UNCG as a Master's student. She was offered a job at NCSU after obtaining her PhD, which she declined. She returned to WSSU and later became the chair of the mathematics department.^[2] She founded the computer science department at WSSU.^[3]

Jones' interest in curriculum development came early on, before the Computer Science program has been established at WSSU. She would teach fellow students how to code during her lunch time. She led the University to develop a graduate program in data analytics. She helped WSSU add data science as a minor for undergraduate students.^[1]

As a grassroots organizer and educator, Jones became committed to mentoring the generations to come of minorities in STEM. She believes that female mentors are important to model careers in STEM for young girls and women to find their voice and potential.^[2]

Her research and studies have focused on acquiring funding to support programs and students. Since 2000, she has secured over $12 million for the computer science program at WSSU.^[1] In 2005, the university named the new computer science building in her honor.^[3] Her research interests include visualization, data retrieval (space science), multimedia systems, system design and development, human-computer interaction, and computer science education.^[4]

She published through SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) in 2018.^[5]

Honors and achievements

Jones was a NASA JOVE Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center from 1994-1997. She was awarded the Outstanding Woman Leaders Award by the city of Winston-Salem in 2006. She was given the Ivory Dome Education Leadership Award in 2009 and was an honoree of Most Important African Americans in Technology in 2010. She was a Residence Fellow for Google Faculty in 2021. She was also Co-PI for the NSF Funded Grant: "Collaborative Research: CISE-MSI:RPEP: SaTC: HBCU Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity (AI-CyS) Research Partnership.”^[2]

Professional organizations

Jones has been active in the Association of Computing Machinery, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, NSF National Canvasing Committee for CISE Directors Search, Big South Data Hub—Education Working Group, National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine: Best Practices for a Future Open Code Policy for NASA Space Science, and National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) Academic Alliance. She was appointed as commissioner and an evaluator for the ABET Computing Accreditation Commission for years 2010-1015 and 2022-2026. She joined the Board of Directors of the Association of Departments of Computer Science at Minority Institutions in 1996.^[1] She began actively serving for the NC Space Grant Consortium in 1997.^[2]

Related Research Articles

Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) is a historically black public university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It is part of the University of North Carolina system.

Wake Forest University School of Medicine is the medical school of Wake Forest University, with two campuses located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. It is affiliated with Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist, the academic medical center whose clinical arm is Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. In 2021, U.S. News & World Report ranked Wake Forest School of Medicine 48th best for research in the nation and 80th best for primary care. The School of Medicine also ranks in the top third of U.S. medical schools in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Guzdial</span>

Mark Joseph Guzdial is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He was formerly a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the College of Computing and the GVU Center. He has conducted research in the fields of computer science education and the learning sciences and internationally in the field of Information Technology. From 2001–2003, he was selected to be an ACM Distinguished Lecturer, and in 2007 he was appointed Vice-Chair of the ACM Education Board Council. He was the original developer of the CoWeb, one of the earliest wiki engines, which was implemented in Squeak and has been in use at institutions of higher education since 1998. He is the inventor of the Media Computation approach to learning introductory computing, which uses contextualized computing education to attract and retain students.

Lorraine Hairston Morton was an American politician who was the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, from 1993 to 2009. Morton was Evanston's first African-American mayor, first Democratic mayor, and longest-serving mayor. She is also notable for spearheading the desegregation of Evanston's public schools as a teacher and school principal.

Annie Antón is an academic and researcher in the fields of computer science, mathematical logic, and bioinformatics.

Owen Astrachan is an American computer scientist and professor of the practice of computer science at Duke University, where he is also the department's director of undergraduate studies. He is known for his work in curriculum development and methods of teaching computer science. He was one of the first National Science Foundation CISE Distinguished Education Fellows, and is a recipient of the ACM Outstanding Educator Award. He was the principal investigator on the multi-year NSF/College Board project that led to the release of the AP Computer Science Principles course and exam.

The UNC School of Information and Library Science(SILS) is the information school of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The school offers a bachelor's degree in information science, a master's degrees in library science and information science, a master's degree in digital curation, and a doctoral degree in information and library science as well as an undergraduate minor, graduate certificate programs, and a post-masters certificate.

Susan H. Rodger is an American computer scientist known for work in computer science education including developing the software JFLAP for over twenty years. JFLAP is educational software for visualizing and interacting with formal languages and automata. Rodger is also known for peer-led team learning in computer science and integrating computing into middle schools and high schools with Alice. She is also currently serving on the board of CRA-W and was chair of ACM SIGCSE from 2013 to 2016.

Cleon Franklin Thompson Jr. was an American educator best known for holding office as the seventh chancellor of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and the eighth chancellor of Winston-Salem State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold L. Martin</span> American academic administrator and engineer (born 1951)

Harold L. Martin Sr. is an American engineer and educator who is Chancelor Emeritus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University.

The North Carolina A&T–Winston-Salem State rivalry is an ongoing series of athletic competitions between historic rivals North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Winston-Salem State University, both of which are located in the state of North Carolina. The intensity of the rivalry is driven by the proximity of the two schools, as both are only 30 miles apart via U.S. Interstate 40; the size of the two schools, as North Carolina A&T is the largest Historically Black College and University in the state and Winston-Salem State is the third largest; coaching personnel, and conference alignments, as both schools at one time were both members of either the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) or the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC). Although a less intense and bitter rivalry than that shared between North Carolina A&T and North Carolina Central University, both A&T and WSSU fans placed great emphasis on this rivalry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lilian Lewis</span> Zoologist and endocrinologist

Lilian Burwell Lewis, (1904–1987) was an American zoologist known for being the first African-American woman to receive a doctorate degree from the University of Chicago and for her research in gonadogenesis. On November 8, 1960 she was elected to Winston-Salem Forsyth County School Board where was an advocate of equity and desegregation. She campaigned for equal treatment of children during a time of De Facto segregation.

Azer Bestavros, is the Inaugural Associate Provost for Computing and Data Sciences and the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Boston University. Prior to his appointment in 2019 to lead the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, he was the Founding Director of The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. He joined Boston University in 1991 as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, which is part of the university's College of Arts & Sciences. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1998 and to the rank of full professor in 2003. From 2000 to 2007, he served as chair of the Department of Computer Science. Prior to joining Boston University, he worked as an instructor, teaching fellow, software engineer, and technical consultant for various organizations and technology companies, including the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office of World Health Organization, Awad Associates, Harvard University, and AT&T Research Laboratories.

Valerie Barr is an American computer scientist, and is the Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Bard College. She formerly held the Jean Sammet endowed chair in the department of Computer Science at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She is known for her work with women in computing.

Cynthia Bailey is a lecturer in Computer Science at Stanford University from Palo Alto, California. Her research interests are in computer science pedagogy and the flipped classroom approach. She has advocated for the greater inclusion of women and minorities in computer science, and is known for her "ladysplaining" article addressing the author of the controversial Google memo.

Sarah Ann Douglas is a distinguished computer scientist, known for her work in human-computer interaction (HCI), a field of computer science that she has helped pioneer, and, in particular, pointing devices and haptic interactions, WWW interfaces and bioinformatics, and visualization and visual interfaces. She is a Professor Emerita of Computer and Information Science and a member of the Computational Science Institute at the University of Oregon.

Camille Althea McKayle is an Afro-Jamaican-American mathematician and is the current Provost of the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI). She holds a PhD in mathematics from Lehigh University and taught undergraduates at Lafayette College and UVI from 1993 to 2008.

Brandeis Marshall is an American data scientist, CEO of DataedX, and Full Professor of Computer Science at Spelman College, where she is the former Chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. Starting in September 2019, Marshall is a faculty associate at Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She has also worked to broaden participation in the field of data science to increase representation of underrepresented minorities, including her effort 'Black Women in Data'.

Alicia Nicki Washington is an American computer scientist, author, and professor at Duke University. She is the author of the book Unapologetically Dope. She was the first Black woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2005.

Cindy Esther Hmelo-Silver is a learning scientist and expert on problem-based learning, collaborative learning, the use of video for learning, and complex systems understanding. She is a Distinguished Professor of Learning Sciences, Barbara B. Jacobs Chair in Education and Technology, and the Associate Dean for Research and Development at Indiana University Bloomington. She is co-Principal Investigator and Education Research Lead of the EngageAI Institute, which conducts research on narrative-centered learning technologies and collaborative learning.

References

1 2 3 4 "Dr. Elva Jones earns the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching 2023 - Winston-Salem State University". www.wssu.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
1 2 3 4 5 6 "Voices Changing Communities: What One Woman Can Do – Forsyth Woman Magazine". forsythwoman.com. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
1 2 "Meet the Women Behind the Building Names - Winston-Salem State University". www.wssu.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
↑ "Spotlight on Faculty at Partner Institutions". cerser.ecsu.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
↑ Jones, Elva (November 2018). "SIGCSE: A pause to look back over the 50 year journey". ResearchGate.