{"id":330,"date":"2016-04-06T14:47:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T19:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/?p=330"},"modified":"2016-11-08T09:45:48","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T15:45:48","slug":"spotlight-on-john-homer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/spotlight-on-john-homer\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight on John Homer"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is your educational background?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Undergraduate: Harding University; Kansas State for Masters and PhD.<\/p>\n

What is your work background?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I worked for Pennzoil-Quaker State in Houston for a couple of years and shorter-term projects at a couple other places.<\/p>\n

What do you teach at ACU?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introductory (freshman level) programming classes and the upper level computer science classes.<\/p>\n

What drew you to teaching? Why did you want to work with students?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like the purity that comes in an academic subject; when it doesn\u2019t get mixed in with business needs and realistic limitations. I like computer science because it is beautiful. It is consistent, it makes sense, we can have an ideal, and we can know when it\u2019s correct. When I was working at a company I found that those things were not always valued as much as dealing with other constraints. I realize that those things have to happen, but I like dealing with the subject in its pure form. I like watching people learn and I like helping people learn.<\/p>\n

What’s the best part of working with students?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the best part of working with students is seeing them able to look back at a problem that seemed to them very hard at the time that they now think of as very easy. One of the things I like most is when I see students get that perspective of \u201cI used to think that was hard, now I don\u2019t. The thing in front of me now seems hard but there will be a time when it is not.\u201d There is a path to work through. There are always things in front of you that you can learn. Once you\u2019ve learned it, it makes a difference.<\/p>\n

Outside of teaching, what passions and hobbies do you have?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I play disc golf. I go home and play with my kids. I really like to read, so I read a lot.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.

Dr. Homer and his kids<\/p><\/div>\n

Tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant\u00a0in your career.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What stands out in my mind is the first time I had somebody I had never met before contact me to say that they had read a paper or journal article that I had written and were trying to apply it but they had some questions and asked if I could help them with it. The first time it happened really stands out in my mind as a time where I felt like I\u2019d finally become a real researcher. It wasn\u2019t just people I knew who were reading my work, but people I had never heard of who had read my work and found it interesting enough and thought it had enough value to contact me to find out more about it.<\/p>\n

Who is your role model, and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My father. I\u2019m a lot like him in personality. I would say that a lot of the decisions I make are heavily based on things I\u2019ve seen him do or deal with.<\/p>\n

Who was your most inspirational professor and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tim Baird, the department chair at Harding. He was very inspirational. He gave me a lot of opportunities to work on interesting things in and outside of class. He really encouraged me to push myself. He was very encouraging when I expressed an interest in going back to graduate school.<\/p>\n

If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would want teleportation. I would want to be able to instantaneously travel from place to place. I don\u2019t like to feel like I\u2019m losing time traversing from one place to another. I don\u2019t like to have to plan ahead. If I were on a trip, I wouldn\u2019t have to pack a suitcase. I would just have to teleport back into my house whenever I needed something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is your educational background? Undergraduate: Harding University; Kansas State for Masters and PhD. What is your work background? I worked for Pennzoil-Quaker State in Houston for a couple of years and shorter-term projects at a couple other places. What do you teach at ACU? Introductory (freshman level) programming classes and the upper level computer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11348,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[3057,814,1876],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-computer-science","tag-faculty","tag-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11348"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/sitc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}