Meet the instructors

We are very excited to teach you this semester! If you have logistical questions or concerns, please contact the course staff.

Instructors give course lectures, manage course staff, and oversee course policies.

Steve Richardson

he/him

• Discord: Steve Richardson#1312
• Email: srichardson@cs.byu.edu
• Dr. Richardson joined the BYU Computer Science faculty in fall 2021 and has been teaching a new course (CS 401R) he created on Machine Translation (MT). He just completed serving for four years as the president of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) and has been involved in MT R&D for over four decades. Before coming to BYU, he worked for 10 years as the Manager of Machine Translation and Translation Systems at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prior experiences include presiding over the Brazil São Paulo South mission, 17 years at Microsoft Research as a Principal Researcher and manager of the Machine Translation Group, and 11 years at IBM working on NLP and MT. His lab at BYU is now creating a large corpus of Church translations in over 90 languages to do research in low-resource neural MT. He and his wife Marianna live in Alpine, Utah and have 12 children and 30 grandchildren.

Tom Stephens

he/him

• Discord: Tom S.#4115
• Email: tstephen@cs.byu.edu
• Dr. Stephens graduated with B.S. in Physics from BYU in 1996 and then went on to receive a M.S and Ph.D. in Astronomy from New Mexico State University in 1999 & 2003. He also holds a Masters of Library Science degree from the University of North Texas which he received in 2016. After receiving his Ph.D, Dr. Stephens went to work at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center doing software development for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope mission, a project he still works on. He has served as a developer, the Testing and Release Manager, Software Manager, and as a Senior Scientific Software Developer over the years. He also served for a year as the Information Systems Development Manager at the Science Support Center of NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infra-red Astronomy (SOFIA). For three years (2014-2017) Dr. Stephens was the Physical and Mathematical Sciences Librarian at the Harold B. Lee Library here at BYU before NASA lured him back. He started as professor in the Computer Science Department in December of 2020.

Meet the TAs

We are very excited to teach you this semester! Please contact course staff if you have any logistical questions or concerns.

Teaching Assistants (TAs), focus their teaching efforts on a particular component of the course, such as sections, exam prep, or walkthrough videos. Head TAs additionally manage a broader component of the course, such as logistics, content, software, office hours, etc.

Nancy Fulda

she/her

• Lab Coordinator
• Discord: techmage#8914
• Email: nfulda@cs.byu.edu
• Hello, and welcome to CS 111! We've got a great group of TAs this year and are going to have a magnificent time. I look forward to meeting all of you.
  Some facts about me: I wrote my first computer program when I was about fourteen years old, a chatbot written in gw-basic that tried to be artificially intelligent but was mostly just obnoxious. Thirty years later, I'm still writing chatbots, although now I do it in Python using neural networks, and we call it conversational AI. I also write science fiction, dabble in piano, and occasionally play Beat Saber. I have six kids, including a pair of three-year-old twins.

Jacob Ballard

he/him

• Head TA
• Section 12 Lead
• Discord: Hepta#0676
• Hey y'all, my name is Jacob Ballard. I am on my 5th year at BYU and studying Computer Science. I enjoy hanging out with people doing just about anything, but particularly playing board games. Additionally, I am a big fan of Brandon Sanderson. I look forward to helping y'all throughout this semester!

Vigynesh Bhatt

he/him

• Section 1 Lead
• Discord: vigynesh#6042
• Hey! I'm Vigynesh. I'm a grad student from India. I did my Bachelors in Economics and Electrical engineering and then decided to switch to CS because I love automating things. Fun to spend a weekend automating a process to save 10 mins of your morning hours am I right? I love gaming (mostly Valorant :p), working out and listening to music in my free time.

Joseph Price

he/him

• Section 2 Lead
• Discord: Joseph Price#7848
• Hey, my name is Joseph Price. This is my third semester. I took cs111 last winter when Professor Decker and Dr Farrell taught it for the first time and I loved it! I am currently majoring in Economics though I am keeping my options open. You might see me doing things with the Minecraft and Magic the Gathering clubs. I always will take book recommendations. I’m excited to work with you all!

Toby Jackson

he/him

• Section 3 Lead
• Discord: TobyJackson (TA)#4173
• Hey y'all, I'm Toby. I'm a sophomore studying computer science and I love overly complicated board games, and playing volleyball. I'm excited to work with all of you this semester.

Chandler Rowe

he/him

• Section 4 Lead
• Discord: Andenor#4888
• Hello! I'm Chandler Rowe. I'm a senior majoring in Linguistics with a minor in Computer Science. In my free time, I enjoy watching movies and playing games with friends. I also do a fair amount of computer programming outside of classes and work. I've been a TA for about two years now, and loved every second of it! I'm excited to work with all of you!

Delaney Reed

she/her

• Section 5 Lead
• Discord: delaney-reed#4071
• Hi, I'm Delaney! I'm a Computer Science: Animation major. I love all things creative, whether it's coming up with unique programming solutions, or singing and playing guitar in my free time! I l also love drawing, watching movies with my friends, and listening to Taylor Swift. I'm excited to work with everyone this semester!

Peter Hu

he/him

• Section 7 Lead
• Discord: Phu#0592
• Hello, my name is Peter and I'm a sophomore Computer Science major. Some things I love doing are listening to music, watching sports, or playing any game. I'm very excited to TA for the first time this year. Please come up to me if you see me, I really want to get to know all of you!

Jarek Wall

he/him

• Section 8 Lead
• Discord: E74#4988
• Too many people start their bios with a greeting, so instead I'll start with a bad comment about it! I, Jarek Wall, am an electrical engineering student who loves programming as a hobby and has done so since high school. I enjoy reading, cooking, and playing terrible video games. I look forward to helping y'all and sharing my bad jokes.

Landon Fackrell

he/him

• Section 9 Lead
• Discord: LandonF#8721
• Hi team! My name is Landon and I am a Computer Science major with an Emphasis in Data Science. I am especially excited to work in this class as I was one of the first students to ever take it! I love CS, rock climbing, skiing, and being with the ones I love. If you ever need someone to ski or climb with I am definitely your guy! Can't wait to work with you all!

Grace Lam

she/her

• Section 10 Lead
• Discord: gracelam#4846
• Hello! My name is Grace. I'm a senior majoring in Math Education and minoring in CS Teaching. In my free time, I love playing sports like pickleball and volleyball. I also enjoy singing and doing jigsaw puzzles. I'm excited to meet you all!

Bekah Sowards

she/her

• Section 11 Lead
• Discord: Rebekah#7005
• Hi, I'm Bekah! I'm a CS senior and I love problem solving and programming languages. I want to teach CS, so I'm really excited to work with you this semester. I served a mission in Japan and am minoring in Japanese. I love reading, writing, and spending time with my family and friends. Ask me sometime how my crochet projects are coming!

Amberly Milne

she/her

• Discord: Amber Milne#1047
• Hi, I'm Amberly! I'm a sophomore studying computer science, and I'm super pumped to TA this semester! I love reading, card games, and dogs. I also enjoy staring at the mountains (living in Utah is so cool!) I'm also on the BYU drumline, and if you can spot me at a football game you get an automatic A :)

Quincy Wilcox

she/her

• Discord: Quincy#2040
• Hi everyone! My name is Quincy. I'm a junior majoring in computer science. I love to read in my free time, especially fantasy. (I'm finally getting on the Brandon Sanderson bandwagon, and I regret not doing so sooner). I also sometimes dabble in art and like making weird music playlists. Here's to making it a great semester!

Heather Mills Beutler

she/her

• Hi! I'm Heather. Taking CS111 last winter really stretched me and I have been thrilled with my growth in this extraordinary discipline. I'm excited to be a TA and hope I can help you learn how to learn coding. My majors are chemical engineering and Arabic. I love eating cookies, playing with dogs, decorating cake, and researching my Norwegian ancestors.

Joseph Geis

he/him

• Section 13 Lead
• Discord: josephDaCoder#0001
• Hey everyone! I'm Joseph Geis, a freshman here at BYU majoring in computer science with a minor in math. I have been into computers since I was two years old and first started coding when I was 10. I am passionate about computer science and hope to help you find the same passion for it in this class!

Jason Oliphant

he/him

• Discord: Nanonumpy#5338
• My name is Jason Oliphant! I'm majoring in the ACME program here at BYU and I have a profound love for coding and problem solving. When I'm not doing homework or in class, I'm probably singing or playing the marimba. I'm always down to try new things and meet new people. I don't know everything, but don't hesitate to reach out if you need any help in the class and I'll help however I can.

Mia McGuire

she/her

• Discord: imapepsi#3480
• Howdy, my name is Mia! I love learning new things, coding in my free time, and building with Legos when possible. I do a lot of journaling too, but I have a weird pet peeve of writing on ruled/lined paper so you’ll usually see me using engineering paper or dot grid notebooks. I’m considering becoming a teacher, so I’m excited to be a TA this semester!

Grace Kenny

she/her

• Discord: Grace K#4714
• Hi, I'm Grace. I'm a sophomore majoring in Computer Science because I love the creativity and problem solving it entails. I first got into programming from doing an hour of code in middle school, which got me to go to a trade high school to study IT, and now BYU to study CS. I love the water, Taekwondo, and running. I also love helping others and sharing my love for CS.

Abby Delorey

she/her

• Discord: abbydelorey04#7070
• Hi everyone! I’m Abby! I'm a freshman majoring in Computer Science with an emphasis in Data Science! I love love love lego flowers, hot girl walks, and Asa Ramen! I'm so excited to TA this semester and I can’t wait to get to know all of you!

Beau Yancey

he/him

• Discord: BeauYancey#2829
• Hey, I’m Beau! I’m a sophomore studying Computer Science and I am stoked to be a TA for CS 111. I love computer science because there are endless possibilities, a computer can do just about anything if you know how to communicate with it. My other hobbies include baking, folk dance, and volleyball. I’m looking forward to meeting you all!

Andrew Nicholls

he/him

• Discord: centerearth#6775
• Hello! My name is Andrew Nicholls, I am a current freshman studying Computer Science. I love playing games, cooking good food, and playing piano. I look forward to meeting and working with all of you!

Contact Us

The best way to contact course staff is through the course Discord server

If you have not already, please join our Discord server using the following invitation link: https://discord.gg/3aCYJDqPJn.

Send a direct message (DM) to one or more of the course staff and we will respond as soon as possible.

TA Help Lab

The TA Help Lab is located in TMCB 1121. TAs are also available to help over Discord. To get help from the TAs, please sign up on the online help queue. Please see the schedule below for daily hours and TA availability.

Instructor Office Hours

Instructor Office Hours are held in person at the following times:

• Dr. Richardson: MW 11:00am-1:00pm in TMCB 3372