Degrees:

Ph.D., University of Cincinnati; M.A., York University; B.A., University of Cincinnati

 

Biography:

Hello Students and Academic Community Members!

 

I am Rebecca Allen, PhD. I am currently the Chair of the Department Computer Science and Mathematics. I want to explain, in a friendly way, who I am.  

 

Did you know that only 1 in 5 graduates of computer science programs in universities is a female? I am interested in how to include everyone in computer science - I believe strongly that girls are an asset in computing.

 

I started my career as a computational linguist and entered into programming and website in the context of entrepreneurship. Later, I went to graduate school and did a PhD in education, focusing on language and computers and how people learn. I like to write about how computers can be used to educate underserved people; I am especially interested in computers and health. I enjoy publishing with undergraduates and other colleagues - if you’d like to work on research, you should come visit me.  I offer free tea and cookies in my office!

 

You can read Rebecca’s CV for her complete list of publications, and link to some of her major/recent publications here.

 

In this article, we talk about how kidney disease patients might struggle to find all the information that they need to make a informed choice about their treatment.  We use computational linguistics - computers and language analysis - to help see what information is out there. 

Allen, R. and Saeed, F. (2022). Dialysis provider organization online information on kidney failure treatments: A content analysis using corpus linguistics. Kidney Medicine., 4(6), 1-8.

In this article, undergraduates, professors here, and I talk about some about some of the obstacles that students face when they start studying in the university.  We think the best way to help students is to work with students to help students, not just study student problems from a distance.

Nakonechnyi, A., Batch, B., Douglas, N., Tucker, C., Theuerling, A., Knox, M., & Allen, R. (2024). Retention reimagined: Participatory action and positive deviancy for university student success. Journal of Participatory Research Methods, 5(1). 

 

To learn more about me, and the department, please follow us on Instagram!