Andrew Sears was a professor and dean of the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and became Provost at Worcester Polytechnic Institute on August 1,2024.
14 Facts About Andrew Sears
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Andrew Sears's research explores issues related to human-computer interaction including mobile computing, speech recognition, information technology accessibility, and situationally-induced impairments and disabilities.
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Andrew Sears pursued undergraduate studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, graduating in 1988 with a BS in Computer Science.
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Subsequently, Andrew Sears pursued graduate studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, earning a PhD in Computer Science.
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Andrew Sears left DePaul to accept a position with the Information Systems Department at UMBC in 1999.
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Andrew Sears served as the Chair of the Information Systems Department at UMBC from 2002 until 2011.
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Andrew Sears served as Interim Chief Information Security Officer for the university from September 2015 until December 2016.
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In 2010, Andrew Sears was named a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery.
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Andrew Sears has chaired the premier conferences in the fields of human-computer interaction and computer accessibility.
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Andrew Sears served in numerous other capacities on the organizing committees of these and other conferences.
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Andrew Sears, working with Vicki Hanson, served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing.
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Andrew Sears is co-editor of the first two editions of the Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, published by CRC Press.
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Andrew Sears employs a broad definition of accessibility which addresses the issues involved in ensuring that individuals with disabilities have access to and can effectively use information technologies as well as the challenges that are associated with situationally-induced disabilities.
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Andrew Sears defines situationally-induced disabilities as the difficulties individuals experience when the conditions in which they are working, or the activities in which they are engaged, result in demands that exceed the user's capabilities.