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Superheroes of Science


Jun 25, 2020

Buster Dunsmore is an Associate Professor of Computer Science who both researches and teaches software engineering at Purdue University. While computer programming can be accomplished by one person, software engineering requires a team of people. Software engineering is a current need for industries. There is not as much of a demand on individual programmers because software engineering teams can create a software package in a much shorter time, 2-3 months versus 1 year if only one person tried to create the same software package. Dunsmore relates the teamwork aspect of software engineering to putting together a big puzzle. Some of the best skills a person can bring into this field of study are good problem solving and communication skills. Dunsmore mentions a collaborative platform, GitHub (https://github.com/ ), which is a software repository used by many freshmen at Purdue that allows students to access and test each other's software. He also tells us not to worry if you are unable to take a coding class in high school. Not only does Purdue not require incoming freshmen to have taken a programming class in high school, but Purdue offers Introduction to Coding classes for students with no experience. Dunsmore was inspired to become a professor/teacher based on his own experiences as a student. When the opportunity came up, he volunteered to teach a freshman level course. He made a vow to himself that if he was ever in a position to teach a freshmen level computer science course, he would make improvements so future students could have a better experience than him.   

 

Dr. Dunsmore's interest areas include software engineering, software architecture, agile methods, software metrics, Java, C++, C, JavaScript, cgi software, object-oriented design and programming, and information Systems. He has been a recipient of the awards Outstanding Teacher in the College of Science and Charles B. Murphy Outstanding Undergraduate

Teacher Award for Purdue University. He was chosen as a Founding Fellow of the Purdue Teaching Academy. Dr. Dunsmore has extensive legal and industrial consulting experience. He has written several technical articles and is coauthor of two books.