Dr. Monisha Pulimood earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of Pune and later received her master’s and Ph.D. in computer science at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Dr. Pulimood has been a professor in the Department of Computer Science at The College of New Jersey since 2004. She has also served as the Department Chair since 2014.
From the fall semester of 2018 to the spring semester of 2021, Dr. Pulimood will serve as the Barbara Meyers Pelson Chair in Faculty-Student Engagement Endowment Fund.
With funds endowed by Mrs. Pelson, Dr. Pulimood is continuing her research of investigating the area of large computational problems that cannot be completely solved without human intervention. Working alongside computer science students from the college, her primary goal is to develop a model for data integration that can be applied to a variety of data-dependent applications using concepts from social computational systems. Through their collaborative research, Dr. Pulimood and her students designed a sustainable website, CABECTPortal, to showcase their Collaborating Across Boundaries to Engage undergraduates in Computational Thinking (CABECT) project, and to share ideas, models, projects and resources related to interdisciplinary collaborations.
Dr. Pulimood is also working with students to design an architecture for data integration that can be used in data-dependent web-based applications. Collaborating with Professor Kim Pearson of the Journalism Department and her journalism classes, Dr. Pulimood, her undergraduate researchers and students in her Software Engineering and Database Systems courses created Students Organizing Against Pollution (SOAP), a web-based application that manages and provides information about potentially polluted properties.
By studying CABECTPortal and SOAP, Dr. Pulimood hopes to create sustainable, reliable data integration that can be used by other data-dependent web-based applications and collaborative projects.
During her chairship, Dr. Pulimood will offer a series of workshops to introduce faculty across campus to the Collaboration Across Boundaries (CAB) model. Through the CAB model, Dr. Pulimood hopes to increase the number of interdisciplinary courses by leading faculty in scheduling classes in tandem and planning allotted time for coordinating such collaborative efforts. The workshops will also help faculty adapt the assessment instruments to their own courses to document the effectiveness of the collaborative model, and develop strategies and talking points to build awareness and support.
Dr. Pulimood hopes that the first Annual Barbara Meyers Pelson Lecture she organized, “Pathways for Disciplinary Integration in Higher Education” will inspire faculty to explore the notion of enhancing faculty-student engagement by redesigning their courses, or developing new ones, to collaborate with students and faculty in another discipline.
Dr. Pulimood’s second lecture in 2020 will focus on promoting faculty-student engagement through the CAB model with a panel discussion consisting of faculty members who have participated in the CAB workshops and adapted the model.
Her final lecture in 2021 will feature Dr. Pulimood’s research that was supported through the endowment and the outcomes of the campus-wide activities, as well as honor the participating students’ hard work and dedication.
Dr. Pulimood would like to thank Mrs. Pelson for creating a visionary endowment fund with a rotating chair that moves the college forward in faculty-student engagement. She is also deeply appreciative of the honor of being selected as the second endowed chair.