Zilles Wins IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award

University of Illinois computer science Professor Craig Zilles has been named the recipient of this year’s IEEE Education Society Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award.  This award recognizes members of the IEEE Education Society who have made outstanding contributions to teaching unusually early in their professional careers, as evidenced by teaching performance, development of new teaching methods, and curricular innovation in fields of interest to the IEEE Education Society.

Professor Zilles’ teaching excellence has already been recognized twice with major teaching awards by the College of Engineering, and he has been on the campus-wide “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students” in all 10 of the 10 semesters that he has taught the undergraduate course as well. But Professor Zilles’ biggest claim to fame comes from the praise of his students.

“I definitely cannot say enough about Professor Zilles and his class. His excellence in teaching not only made my job as a student much easier, but more importantly ensured that I learned a lot, was consistently engaged in class, and was excited about going to class every week,” said CS alumnus James Commons. “Professor Zilles was more than just a good professor; he was one of the best teachers that I have ever had in my three years on campus at the University of Illinois. “

On any given day Professor Zilles can be found sprinting to the lecture hall, ten minutes early with lecture handouts in hand, to class.

Professor Zilles’ passion and zeal for teaching the material is evident. He utilizes multiple teaching methods so that students with different learning capacities can understand the information, and revised the curriculum to bring new research developments as well as his own teaching principles and innovations into the classroom.

“I see the inherent beauty of computer science and engineering and want to share this with my students and present these ideas in a way that is relevant to my students. I am inspired by teaching large classes; it enables me to touch so many and makes it worth investing my time to develop new and better ways of teaching,” says Professor Zilles.

Despite the fact the large class size - course enrollment is regularly between 100 to 150 students - Professor Zilles has introduced innovative methodologies to improve learning.  Zilles utilizes in class examples, problem solving sessions, discussion sections  one of which he teaches), and interactive tutorials to keep students engaged in this required course.  His lecture handouts are known for featuring try-it-yourself problems to think about and discuss prior to lecture. 

According to his students, his thoroughness and organization don’t end when lecture is over.

“Throughout the entire course, he makes sure that no student’s questions go unanswered, by distributing full solutions for every single problempresented in the course, including exams, homework, and discussion section problems,” said computer science senior Melisa Kudeki.

“About halfway through the semester, many students were having trouble understanding how to translate C to MIPS and MIPS to C,” explains CS alumnus Gavin Rehkemper.  “In response to this, Professor Zilles went above and beyond his duty – he made multiple videos explaining the process and posted them, which allowed us to go through the process multiple times, yielding a much better understanding of the material.”

Zilles innovated a highly anticipated end-of-semester competition known as “SPIMbot”. During SPIMbot, students form groups and program a robot entirely in MIPS assembly to compete with other robots to grab tokens, solve sudoku puzzles, and gain directions to the next target, outsmarting opposing bots. The competition brings together concepts from every part of the course. His competition has been adopted by instructors at other institutions as well. 

CS 232 provides students with a mental model of how assembly language programs are executed on computer hardware and introduces students to the organization and performance analysis of modern computers. This subject matter is important for an in-depth understanding of the inner workings modern computers and tradeoffs between computer hardware and software.

Amidst all this hard work, Professor Zilles has also made time for research and publishing. It should come as no surprise that he has written eight papers in education-focused engineering and computer science venues. 

His genuine care for students as individuals has led him to make valuable contributions to improving undergraduate education across the CS department. Outside the classroom, Professor Zilles regularly attends departmental functions for students, and also serves as an academic advisor. He is known for his willingness to explain things and approachability outside of the classroom. In fact, he has been named an outstanding advisor by the College of Engineering for three of the last four academic years; nominations for this award come from the student body.

“I genuinely care about my students, which motivates me to do my best, and they recognize that fact. Students frequently ask me what other courses I teach, and are disappointed that I almost exclusively teach CS 232. I could ask for no higher praise,” says Professor Zilles.

The Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award honors former University of Illinois faculty member Mac Van Valkenburg, who joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department in 1955. He became head of the EE Department in 1966. In 1984, he was named the dean of the College of Engineering. He guided the college to “national prominence during a ‘renaissance in engineering’” according to the IEEE website. 

Nominations for the Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award are evaluated on the basis of the candidate’s statement of teaching philosophy and practice, letters of support from students and peers, and student evaluations. This award honors the individual for outstanding technical contributions and distinguishable leadership in a field within the scope of CAS Society are consistently evident. The award is based on the quality and significance of contribution, and continuity of technical leadership.