Having earned multiple recognitions for his educational work from the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Dr. David R. Schneider felt a call to action with the announcement of the CSforAll initiative. Out of his conversations with OSTP members, he developed with eCornell a new Computational Thinking Certification (eCCTC) program. The effort aims to review and provide Ivy League recognition to exceptional middle / high school level programs and to the individual students of those programs. At the same time, eCCTC also aims to help developing programs identify areas of improvement, so they too can become more effective experiences and earn this recognition. In turn, eCCTC recognition can then bolster these programs credibility in the eyes of the public, schools, and government programs, encouraging the program’s wider use and potential adoption to meet emerging CS educational needs.
As the current Director of MEng Studies in Systems Engineering at Cornell University, David has also developed a low-cost, new CS educational robotic platform, called the miniBot which can serve students from pre-K through early college and is currently being licensed by Educational Technologies. Additionally, David is the founder of the Cornell Cup embedded systems competition which was started with Intel and now has Arm as its primary sponsor. David also used to be a screenwriter for Disney and is working on a new inspirational STEM competition involving robotics and Hollywood.
