ByJason Cohen in Features, Nov | Dec 2023 on November 1, 2023 at 12:01 am |

Most days, youre likely to find Katie Genter, PhD 17, in front of a laptop just not quite in the way that she would have expected when she was studying computer science at the Gates-Dell Complex. And especially not where she expected.

In the first nine months of 2023, Katie and her husband, JT Genter, have been to 68 cities and 22 countries. They started the year with a flight from Birmingham, Alabama, through Dallas, Texas, to Sydney, Australia, with stops in Brisbane, Hamilton Island, and Melbourne. This summer, the Genters attended a music festival at the Gorge in Central Washington in between a July spent mostly in France and an August in South Korea, China, and Japan. They also snuck into Austin for a couple of days, visited their families in Florida and Georgia, and attended a professional conference in Minneapolis before flying out of New York City for two weeks in Bali. By the time this issue of the Alcalde hits your mailbox, theyll be on a trip to Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and the United Arab Emiratesthe latter for just one day to catch a flight to London. On any given night, Katie and JT might be RVing in a state park or dining on a flight where the service is fancy enough to merit actually enjoying the food.

But the Genters dont spend much money on travel at all. They are what some call points and miles peoplemasters of frequent flier programs, hotel loyalty programs, and credit cardsas well as digital nomads, without a permanent physical home since they emptied out their apartment the year Katie graduated. They have managed to turn their passions for both travel and savings into careers.

In most cases, digital nomad might mean someone who spends a few months or a year in one exotic place, working for an American company. The Genters instead live week-to-week, and sometimes even day-by-day. They also arent remote working per se, because the travel is the job. They are simultaneously journalists, participants, and role models in how to use points and miles. Katie is currently a writer and senior editor for the The Points Guy website, to which shes contributed since 2015, while JT, who also previously wrote for TPG, is currently editor-in-chief of the points and miles tracking service AwardWallet.

If you travel frequently for work or pleasure, you probably have a preferred airline, perhaps with an affiliated credit card. You probably stick with that airline in order to rack up the bonus miles and perks (early boarding, a free checked bag, seat upgrades) that come with elite frequent-flyer status. Maybe youve even signed up for one or two credit cards in recent years specifically to collect a welcome bonus or certain useful statement credits.

But those fundamentals have little in common with the Genters strategy. To pull it off requires a lot of research, work, and elaborate spreadsheets. Less necessary are Katies PhD in computer science or JTs background in accounting, though both certainly help. It also takes a lot of credit cardsKatie and JTs current total between them is 56, including eight new ones just in the past year.

The lifestyle is, needless to say, not for everybody.

Most people shouldnt even have eight cards, much less get eight cards in a year, Katie says.

It all started at RoboCup.

Thats an international robot soccer tournament, not a Paul Verhoeven movie. And whether you call it a sport or an academic research project (its both), its yet another area where The University of Texas excels. Its also what initially brought Katie Genter to Austin and then turned both the Genters into travelers.

The daughter of an accountant (mom) and a programmer (dad), Katie grew up in Cumming, Georgia, about an hour north of Atlanta, and got her bachelors in computer science at Georgia Tech. Thats where she met JTand also where she first attended RoboCup. The tournament, in which computer science students from around the world program robots to compete in soccer, was held there in 2007. Genter volunteered at the event, where she first encountered Peter Stone, UT computer science professor and director of the Texas Robotics program. When she decided to look at graduate schools, Stones influence and the students she met who were already in his Learning Agents Research Group made UT the perfect fit. Her plan then was the same as most PhD candidates: to eventually teach and conduct research as a professor herself. But first, there was RoboCup.

In 2011, RoboCup had been held in Istanbul; that became Katie and JTs first big international trip together, with time built in for tourism. The next year, Katie helped lead UTs Austin Villa team to victory in Mexico City as a second-year grad student. Even though the 2012 tournament was relatively close to home, JT had to miss it due to work. But he still got to be a big part of the championship celebration, lobbying the Office of the President to light the Tower orange to commemorate Austin Villas win.

He vowed never to miss another one again, especially with Katie joining the events organizing committee in 2013. RoboCup became their annual vacation: the Netherlands in 2013, Brazil in 2014. Katies travel expenses, at least for RoboCup itself, were covered by the team, while JT found himself cheap flights.

Then came 2015, when the tournament was in Hefei, China, and he couldnt find anything for less than $2,000 round-trip. By then JT had started following this website called The Points Guy and had even met the eponymous Points Guy himself, Brian Kelly, at South by Southwest that year. Feeling inspired, JT decided to apply for a Chase credit card that offered 70,000 Chase Points upon creation of the account.

I had no idea what Chase Points could get you, JT says. But I found out you could transfer them to United. And what do United miles get you? Oh, you can fly one-way to China for 35,000 miles. I was hooked after that. Soon Katie would be, too.

Over the next couple of years, JT started blogging himself and then freelancing for TPG, including writing about that first trip to China. Eventually he was contributing so much that he took a sabbatical from his accounting job to write and travel for a while. Instead, Kelly asked him not to go back to accounting. And Katie eventually joined The Points Guy as a freelancer. She wrote a fair amount of her PhD thesison the potential use of robotics to keep birds from flying into plane propellers and wind farm bladesaboard an airplane.

After Katie graduated, the Genters decided to go all-in to pursue their love of travel and the points-and-miles lifestyle. They packed up their house in Austins Far West neighborhood even as Katie defended her PhD (the easy part, compared to writing the thesis) and sold or gave away everything they owned except whatever could fit in their respective cars, which they then stashed at their parents houses. Ditching nearly all of their possessions was emotional but ultimately freeing, Katie says.

But they had no idea if any of it would be sustainablementally, physically, or financially.

I think we figured we would be on the road for about a year, Katie says. Maybe more. That was more than six years ago.

Technically, the Genters home is in Neptune Beach, Florida, where JTs mom lives. Thats where they send their mail, go to the dentist, have a library card, and vote. They also keep an RV in Georgia, where both Katies parents and JTs father live.

The RV was acquired early in the COVID-19 pandemic, which almost trapped them in Johannesburg, South Africa. As borders began to close, JT was able to get them both on the second-to-last Delta flight back to the United States.

The airport was pretty much apocalyptic, Katie says. People were panicking, flights were being canceled and delayed. Youre hearing the prices some people paid, and we felt very thankful that we got back on points.

In the first year of the pandemic, they lived with their respective parents for a whileand then, naturally, found an RV relocation rental that would allow them to road trip from Los Angeles to Dallas for $1 a day. They eventually bought a used RV of their own and drove full-time for about a year before returning to international travel in the (mostly) vaccinated world.

Part of their job, including JTs social media presence, is to show people how it can be done. To paraphrase Rene Zellwegers character in Jerry Maguire, first class used to be about a better meal, and now its about a better lifebut there are lots of ways to improve the travel experience without making it to first class.

For example, its unthinkable for the Genters not to check a bag each; they are on the road too much and for too long not to. Contact lens solution alone would have to be restocked constantly if they could only carry it in 3-ounce bottles. But they certainly dont pay checked bag fees. And if a canceled flight strands them for eight hours at an airport, they are probably relaxing in a lounge and/or have delay insurance, plus elite traveler status that means they dont have to stand in one of those interminable customer service lines to get rebooked.

Were not the travelers that are sleeping on the chairs in the terminal, JT says. We were those travelers back when, but not anymore. (Though they still fly coach plenty, the Genters note, especially with Southwests companion pass.)

The line between work and play can be fineand the work is still work. The booking (JT handles the flights; Katie, the accommodations), the writing, the transit itself, and the fact that they move around so much instead of hanging somewhere for a long time.

It can be exhausting, Katie says. You can feel like youre always working, not experiencing the place.

But since they are both essentially business reporters rather than experiential travel writers, once they turn in the story, they can have their fun. If theyre at the pool, its because they want to go to the pool, not because they have to get a picture of the pool for a hotel review. And while they delight in getting fed the best possible food for the least amount of money when they are in hotels, airline clubs, or planes, they are also not going to let that keep them from hitting all the restaurants they want to in Japan.

Will it ever end?

Teaching may still be in Katies future, but not so long as shes nomadic. And they even managed to bring a pet along with them for a while: Their cat Gracie, whom theyd gotten in 2006, put in a lot of miles. (According to her European pet passport, she was of German origin.) Gracie once wrote a fairly withering review of the then-Kimpton New York City hotel the Ink 48, and lived with Katies mom when she didnt join in on the travels. She died in 2022which ended up being another time that points and miles served for more than just fun, when the Genters booked a last-minute, cross-country flight to Georgia to be with her.

And kids? They arent sure if they want to have them, but if they do, they would by no means give up travel. They have met others who still travel full-time with children, for whom the entire world becomes their school. There are also so-called traveling circuses, or groups of nomadic families who have teachers in their group.

People ask us about this all the time, Katie says. Like, oh, when are you going to settle down? Where are you going to get a house? When are you going to stop doing this? And weve always just said, whenever we dont want to be doing this anymore.

CREDITS: Photographs by Jon Pack and courtesy of Katie Genter

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This Longhorn Is a World Traveler and Points Master - The Alcalde

(In this series, indianexpress.com will talk to Indian students who have secured admission to some of the top colleges in the world or the Ivy League colleges. They will share their journey of admission from deciding which course and college, to the importance of SoPs, LoRs, documents and more)

I first got to know about foreign universities when I was in either Class 8 or 9, which is when I started participating in the Olympiads. Some of my friends who were senior to me were planning to study abroad. After discussing with them, in Class 11, I started considering this.

At that time, I was planning to study at a top engineering institute in India, and therefore, I appeared for entrance exams like JEE too. I decided to apply to maybe three or four colleges abroad and see if I make it into any of those.

I applied to Stanford, Harvard, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Out of these, I got accepted into MIT and Harvard. After analysing my choices, I decided to pursue Mathematics with Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

I think if someone is particularly interested in computer science, coding and mathematics, then MIT is the right university.However, there have been instances where I thought that if I had chosen Harvard, I would have had the option of choosing a few humanities courses.

Also, from the people I have talked to from Harvard, they are a bit more social, outgoing and easier to talk to. This might partially just be a stereotype but a lot of MIT students, including me, are slightly introverted. However, overall, I think I made the right choice.

The admission process for MIT is different from our Indian college system. In India, admissions are solely based on the marks scored by students in school and entrance exams. However, for American colleges, its a more holistic approach. For MIT, aspirants have to fill out an online application and answer some questions in the form of a few essays. They should remember that these essay questions clearly state what they require. It is important to write about yourself and your achievements, rather than beating around the bush. The admission committee carefully reads these essays to analyse if you would be a good fit or not.

The next important thing is the letter of recommendation (LoR). One LoR can be from your school principal or the subject teacher of the major you are applying for. Along with this, you should try and get a letter of recommendation from the company you have interned at, for example, I took an LoR from one of the employees of the company I interned with during my schooling years.

Another thing to concentrate on is the Statement of Purpose (SoP) which is important and can help make your application stand out. The SoP should not be generalised; that essay defines you and your aim in the chosen college, course and future. If you write something which is common and surface-level, it will dilute the value of your application. For this, ensure you do a lot of research on the college and course, and embed information from that to your essay, wherever relevant.

One main thing to remember is that these universities usually state on their website what they are looking for, and it is important to pay heed to that.

I started thinking about this in Class 11. So I wrote all the essays in Class 12 after studying. I think what helped was that I was never explicitly doing these things for college, but I had participated in the Olympiads a few times, which MIT values greatly. And I had interned for experience, but that also majorly helped my applications.

Therefore, students should get more experience and participate in relevant activities during schooling days. What works more organically, and what works better for these colleges is to just do what you like, and try to excel in the subjects you like while in high school. And that automatically translates into a good application.

Its up to the student and their family how they want to split the time. I never prepared too much for board exams because I knew I wanted to pursue maths and computer science.

However, aspirants should remember that marks do matter in the US. So, I would advise aspirants to pay attention in class, get their basic concepts right and score decent marks in the board exams, as people with poor high school scores are seen in a bad light in the US.

I read the blogs by alumni that were available on the MIT website, and also some previously submitted essays by other candidates to get a hint of how these SoPs should be drafted.

The alumni network is usually the best guide for the top colleges, since these graduates have lived the experience we are embarking on, and they have also gained work experience since then so they know how relevant these skills would be in the future. I reached out to some of the alumni of MIT through my social circles at the Math Olympiad. You can also connect with people through LinkedIn.

Look for information through the official website rather than the social media platforms such as Quora, as that information would be more reliable and closer to the actual picture.

Read more:

Indians in top colleges | Harvard vs MIT: How I secured a seat at this top college - The Indian Express

I truly believe that Californias future is dependent on preparing students for the tech-driven global economy. You see where the world is going, and its urgent that we make this happen, said Allison Scott, chief executive officer of the Kapor Foundation, an Oakland-based organization that advocates for equity in the technology sector.

Scott was among those at aconferencein Oakland this week aimed at expanding computer science education nationally. While some states such as Arkansas, Maryland and South Carolina are well on their way to offering computer science to all students, California lags far behind. According to a2022 report by Code.org (PDF), only 40% of California high schools offer computer science classes, well below the national average of 53%.

Californias lower-income students, rural students and students of color were significantly less likely to have access to computer science classes, putting them at a disadvantage in the job market, according to a 2021 report (PDF)by the Kapor Center and Computer Science for California.

The state has made some progress in the past few years since adopting its sweeping Computer Science Strategic Implementation Planandcurriculum standardsin 2018. More students are taking and passing the Advanced Placement computer science exams, and schools are gradually adding computer science curriculum either as a stand-alone class or integrated into math, science or other courses. The University of California now accepts computer science as satisfying a third or fourth year of math or science, instead of just as an elective. And some districts, such as Oakland Unified and San Francisco Unified, have greatly expanded their computer science offerings, thanks in part to a grant from the Salesforce Foundation.

To help solve the computer science teacher shortage, Gov. Gavin Newsom this month signed Assembly Bill 1251, which creates a commission that will look at ways to streamline the process of becoming a computer science teacher. The current process is so arduous, some say, that its keeping high-quality teachers from the classroom, especially in rural and lower-income areas.

Currently, there are three ways to teach computer science in California. One is to earn a career and technical education credential, which requires work experience but no post-graduate coursework. Another is to hold a math, business or industrial technology credential. The third is to obtain a credential in any subject and then add an extra 20 units of computer science. Because of confusion over requirements, funding and curriculum, schools have difficulty finding the right teachers to teach specific classes.

The goal is to ensure we have well-prepared computer science teachers for all students so they can engage in the world around them. Were making progress, but we have a ways to go, said Julie Flapan, director of the Computer Science Equity Project at UCLA. The new law should help eliminate that confusion, possibly leading to the creation of a computer science credential.

Link:

California Near the Bottom of US Computer Science Rankings as It Struggles With Teacher Shortage - KQED

For as long as Jake Price has been a teacher, Wolfram Alpha a website that solves algebraic problems online has threatened to make algebra homework obsolete.

Teachers learned to work around and with it, said Price, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Puget Sound, in Tacoma, Washington. But now, they have a new homework helper to contend with: generative artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT.

Price doesnt see ChatGPT as a threat,and hes not alone. Some math professors believe AI, when used correctly, could help strengthen math instruction. And its arriving on the scene at a time when math scores are at a national historic low and educators are questioning if math should be taught differently.

AI can serve as a tutor, giving a student who is floundering with a problem immediate feedback. It can help a teacher plan math lessons, or write a variety of math problems geared toward different levels of instruction. It can even show new computer programmers sample code, allowing them to skip over the boring chore of learning how to write basic code.

As schools across the country debate banning AI tools, some math and computer science teachers are embracing the change because of the nature of their discipline.

Related: How can schools dig out from a generations worth of lost math progress?

Math has always been evolving as technology evolves, said Price. A hundred years ago, people were using slide rules and doing all of their multiplication with logarithmic tables. Then, along came calculators.

Sluggish growth in math scores for U.S. students began long before the pandemic, but the problem has snowballed into an education crisis. This back-to-school season, the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, will be documenting the enormous challenge facing our schools and highlighting examples of progress. The three-year-old Reporting Collaborative includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.

Price teaches with human-capable technologies in mind, making sure to give students the skills in class by hand. Then, he discusses with them the limitations of the technologies they might be tempted to use when they get home.

Computers are really good at doing tedious things, Price said. We dont have to do all the tedious stuff. We can let the computer do it. And then we can interpret the answer and think about what it tells us about the decisions we need to make.

He wants his students to enjoy looking for patterns, seeing how different methods can give different or the same answers and how to translate those answers into decisions about the world.

ChatGPT, just like the calculator and just like the slide rule and all the technology before, just helps us get at that core, real part of math, Price said.

Conversely, ChatGPT has its limits. It can show the right steps to solving a math problem and then give the wrong answer.

This is because its not actually doing the math, Price said. Its just pulling together pieces of the sentences where other people have described how to solve similar problems.

Min Sun, a University of Washington education professor, thinks students should use ChatGPT like a personal tutor. If students get lost in class and dont understand a mathematical operation, they can ask ChatGPT to explain it and give them a few examples.

The Khan Academy, an educational nonprofit that provides a collection of online learning tools and videos and has long been a go-to for math homework, has created exactly that.

The tutor is called Khanmigo. Students can open it while completing math problems and tell it that they are stuck.

They can have a conversation with the AI tutor, telling it what they dont understand, and the AI tutor helps to explain, said Kristen DiCerbo, the chief learning officer at Khan Academy.

Instead of saying, Heres the answer for you, it says things like, Whats the next step? or What do you think might be the next thing to do? DiCerbo said.

Related: The science of reading swept reforms into classrooms nationwide. What about math?

Sun, the UW education professor, wants teachers to use ChatGPT as their own assistant: to plan math lessons, give students good feedback and communicate with parents.

Teachers can ask AI, What is the best way to teach this concept? Or What are the kinds of mistakes students tend to make when learning this math concept? Or, What kinds of questions will students have about this concept?

Teachers can also ask ChatGPT to recommend different levels of math problems for students with different mastery of the concept, she said. This is particularly helpful for teachers who are new to the profession or have students with diverse needs special education or English language learners, Sun said.

Im amazed by the details that sometimes ChatGPT can offer, Sun said. It gives you some initial ideas and possible problem areas for students so I can get myself more prepared before walking into the classroom.

And, if a teacher already has a high-quality lesson plan, they could feed that to ChatGPT and ask it to create another lesson in a similar teaching style, but for a different concept.

Sun hopes ChatGPT can also help teachers write more culturally appropriate word-problem questions to make all their students feel included.

The current technology is really a technical assistant to support them, empower them, amplify their creative abilities, Sun said. It is really not a substitute to their own agency, their own creativity, their own professionalism. They really need to keep that in mind.

Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety

A year ago, if you asked Daniel Zingaro how he assesses his introductory computer science students, he would say: We ask them to write code.

But if you ask him today, the answer would be far more complex, said Zingaro, an associate professor at the University of Toronto.

Zingaro and Leo Porter, a computer science professor at University of California San Diego, authored the book Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming with GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT. They believe AI will allow introductory computer science classes to tackle big-picture concepts.

A lot of beginner students get stuck writing very simple code, Porter and Zingaro said. They never move on to more advanced questions and many still cant write simple code after they complete the course.

Its not just uninteresting, it is frustrating, Porter added. They are trying to build something and they forgot a semicolon and theyll lose three hours trying to find that missing semicolon or some other bit of syntax that prevents a code from running properly.

AI doesnt make those mistakes, and allows computer science professors to spend more of their time teaching higher-level skills.

The professors now ask their students to take a big problem and break it down to smaller questions or tasks the code needs to do. They also ask students to test and debug code once it is already written.

If we think bigger picture about what we want our students to do, we want them to write software that is meaningful to them, Porter said. And this process of writing software is taking this fairly big, often not-well-defined problem and figuring out, how do I break them into pieces?

Magdalena Balazinska, director of the University of Washingtons Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, embraces the progress AI has made.

With the support of AI, human software engineers get to focus on the most interesting part of computer science: answering big software design questions, Balazinska said. AI allows humans to focus on the creative work.

Not all professors in the field think AI should be integrated into the curriculum. Some interviewed for a UC San Diego research paper and in an Education Week survey prefer blocking or negating the use of ChatGPT or similar tools like Photomath, at least in the short term.

Zingaro and Porter argue that reading a lot of code generated by AI doesnt feel like cheating. Rather, its how a student is going to learn.

I think a lot of programmers read a lot of code, just like how I believe the best writers read a lot of writing, Zingaro said. I think that is a very powerful way to learn.

This story about AI and math was produced by The Seattle Times in cooperation with the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that is documenting the math crisis facing schools and highlighting progress. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.

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AI might disrupt math and computer science classes - in a good way - The Hechinger Report

Having real-time data at our fingertips has become such an expected thing in the internet age that most of us dont think about how it happens and how to make it better.

Professor KD Kang, Department of Computer Science

Thats where computer science researchers like Professor KD Kang can help.

Kang a faculty member at Binghamton Universitys Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science recently received a $599,084 grant from the National Science Foundation to improve real-time data services that support smart transportation, healthcare, manufacturing and other key functions.

To be most useful to users, real-time data services need to fulfill three important mandates: The data must be as fresh as possible, it needs to be processed in an efficient way, and the system should not consume too much energy.

My research is trying to support these three requirements, but sometimes they conflict with each other, Kang said. For example, if you want to maximize freshness, you can update the data very frequently, but that takes more resources. Other tasks or queries that need to be processed in a timely manner may miss deadlines, and it also increases power consumption. I want to strike a balance between those three conflicting requirements, and that could have important applications in the real world.

Calling it an underexplored area of research, Kang will leverage advanced memory hardware features and real-time data characteristics to enhance timeliness and reduce processor and memory power consumption.

For instance, he wants to use machine learning to better prioritize what data is most needed and how it is processed, as well as aggregating tasks with similar data needs and consolidating them to one CPU core. That allows idle cores to be turned off to reduce power consumption.

Much of the work for the NSF grant will be trying different combinations of freshness, processing speed and power requirements to find the right balance among all three that provides optimum performance.

Near the end, I will have a prototype system that can target a specific application such as vehicle sensors something that has a nice set of sensors and a lot of real-time data analysis requirements, as well as tight power-consumption requirements, Kang said. Compared to current systems, I can hopefully enhance timeliness and freshness but reduce power consumption by, say, 20%. Thats my goal. Then we can take what we learn and apply it in other contexts.

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Professor wins NSF grant to improve real-time data services ... - Binghamton