2017 Faculty & Staff Impact (Faculty Service) Award
Stehlik, the assistant dean of the School of Computer Science (SCS), began teaching at Carnegie Mellon in 1982. “I started here at Carnegie Mellon at 1979 as a Ph.D. student in computer science,” Stehlik said. “I wasn’t really excited about the research direction I was on, and I knew I wanted to teach.” He applied for an opening as a teaching professor in the computer science department. He got the job, and he has not stopped teaching since.
Stehlik is one of the few administrative faculty members involved in the undergraduate program of the SCS since its creation in 1988. One of the key factors of SCS’s success, Stehlik said, was that Carnegie Mellon already had one of the best Ph.D. programs in computer science.
Stehlik said that his main role as assistant dean of SCS was to “figure out how to take some best attributes of that [graduate] program and just move it [to the undergraduate program] and bring really strong students.”
Another integral part of Stehlik’s daily work is advising. He has shepherded more than 2,500 students through the undergraduate computer science program.