Academic Innovation Speaker Series: Dan Garcia Special Event
Date & Time:
Tuesday, Dec 02, 2025 •
Penn Engineering Online Students are invited to join us for the third installment of our Academic Innovation Speaker Series:
“A’s for All” (As Time and Interest Allow) featuring Dan Garcia, Teaching Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (CS) department at UC Berkeley
Invitations will be emailed to students enrolled in our online master’s degree programs with an opportunity to register to attend this event virtually.
Traditional grading paradigms often fail to cater to diverse learning paces and styles, potentially sidelining those needing more time to learn the material. “A’s for All” (as time and interest allow) is an innovative pedagogical philosophy that builds on grading for equity, mastery learning, growth mindset, and competency-based approaches. It gives every student the opportunity and time to learn the material, including working beyond the term. It removes barriers and late penalties, and sends a strong signal to students that they can achieve any level of mastery they want, if they are willing to put in the time and effort. We will share the principles of “A’s for All” and actionable insights to refine and enhance teaching methodologies. We hope this talk will sow the seeds for a more inclusive, flexible, and student-centric future in STEM education.
Dan Garcia
Dan Garcia (UC Berkeley MS 1995, PhD 2000) is a Teaching Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (CS) department at UC Berkeley. Selected as an ACM Distinguished Educator in 2012 and ACM Distinguished Speaker in 2019, 2022, and 2025, he has won all four of the department’s computer science teaching awards, as well as the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award in 2025.
He is a national leader in the “CSforALL” and “A’s for All (as time and interest allow)” movements, bringing engaging computer science to students normally underrepresented in the field, and supporting them to achieve proficiency. Thanks to four National Science Foundation grants, the “Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC)” non-majors course he co-developed has been shared with over 1,500 high school teachers! He is delighted to regularly have more than 50% female enrollment in BJC, with a high mark of 71% in the Spring of 2023, shattering the record at UC Berkeley for an introductory computing course, and ranking among the highest in the nation.
His CS education research and development (R&D) interests are centered on advancing equity through grading policies that give students the time they need to achieve proficiency. His GamesCrafters computational game theory R&D group builds tools to strongly solve, analyze, and play abstract strategy games. He has advised 25 MS students and over a thousand undergraduates since forming his varied Research, Art, and Development (RAD) groups in 2001.