Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë

2024 Award Recipient

Bess Family Dean of the Dietrich College of Humanities & Social Sciences

Richard Scheines has made significant contributions to the educational mission of the university, including playing a leading or senior role in the Simon Initiative, the Open Learning Initiative (OLI), the PIER program and the METALS program. In 1997, Dr. Scheines led the creation of the human- computer interaction major and directed the major for seven years. As a researcher, he collaborated with Professor Wilfried Sieg to develop an intelligent tutor for formal proofs and show it to be effective. He also was part of a team that used causal discovery methods he helped develop to show that interactive exercises in online courses are between 6 and 15 times more effective than passive activities like reading or watching videos at improving student learning outcomes, a phenomenon now known as the “doer effect.” As dean of Dietrich College, Scheines led a complete revision of the college’s General Education program, designed to provide students with serious exposure to multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to problem-solving and to iteratively improve in response to continual multi-pronged empirical assessment. Dean Scheines launched the Grand Challenge Seminar program for first-year students, the Pittsburgh Summer Internship Program and a Community Engagement Fellowship program. He has passionately and effectively promoted interdisciplinary education in the Dietrich College, across Ò»±¾µÀÎÞÂë and beyond.