Faculty Spotlight: Carter Tillquist

Dr. Carter Tillquist joined Chico State’s department of Computer Science as an assistant professor in 2020. With an MS and a PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder, he brings a lifelong passion for computer science and an enthusiastic sense of curiosity to his teaching and research.

He recently spoke with us about the fascinating variety of pursuits and opportunities that computer science offers. Excerpts of the conversation follow here.

Q: What drew you to Chico State?

A: The teaching focus. As I was going through grad school, I was very excited about research. I still am, certainly, but I developed an interest in and love for teaching. My grad school offered a certificate in college teaching, and I was able to get that certificate. As I was starting to consider next steps, I was looking for schools that weren’t solely about research, and where there was space and time to think about and to interact with students.

Q: What courses do you teach in the MS in Computer Science program?

A: I helped Professor Abbas Attarwala with our CSCI 310 course, Programming Foundations, which is an introduction to programming: thinking about data structures and algorithms, things like that. That's a course that I love. The ideas that you talk about there include a lot of very interesting topics that come up again and again and again in the rest of the curriculum and as you go out into the real world.

I anticipate teaching the CSCI 650 course: Algorithms and Computability. It’s an introduction to the theory of computation. It asks, “What is possible? What can we do with computers?” and the flip side of that: “What can't we do? What are some questions that are impossible to answer with what we have? And when we encounter such a question, what do we do? Do we just give up or are there ways to get a good answer without necessarily getting an exact answer?”

Later on, we may add a course in Applied Graph Theory, which I also enjoy, and possibly some classes about natural language processing and bioinformatics, all of which I'm very excited about.

Q: What do you especially enjoy about teaching?

A: There are a number of things. One certainly is sharing this love for the subject. But also, I feel that there's such a wide variety of backgrounds of people who are interested in computer science. There are so many applications in all different fields. So you get people coming in, interested in these different applications, which means I get to learn. I get to learn about and hear their ideas and what they're interested in and excited about. And in some sense, as a computer scientist, you get to play in everybody else's backyard, with all of their ideas. And that's something that I really enjoy.

Q: What first sparked your interest in computer science? Do you remember how old you were?

A: When I was very young, maybe in fourth or fifth grade, I played computer games. One of my favorites was Age of Mythology. I would play against the computer. I had dial-up internet, so I couldn't play online. Playing against the computer, you realized that the computer wasn't very smart. You could pretty easily identify the patterns that it was using and then take advantage of those. So my thought, as a kid, was, “Can I make this better? Why isn't this like a human? Why is this so easy to game (in some sense)?” That interest in artificial intelligence has stayed with me. It has certainly changed form over the years, but that general idea is something I'm very, very interested in.

I'll also say I was very lucky. In high school, we had a teacher who started some computer science classes. I was able to take the AP class and that was an invaluable experience. I think that really let me see, “This is something I can do, something that's available to me as an option.” That’s what I chose to pursue as an undergraduate. I continued to love it, continued to be really excited about it, and then went on to graduate school.

Q: Your background includes projects on a wide range of topics, from visual art to drug abuse to strategy games to genetics, and on from there. What stands out to you about those experiences?

A: This brings us back to the excitement about variety. At the same time, if you dig a little bit deeper, you realize that at the foundation, they're all connected. Finding those connections and saying, "This is a problem in genetics or in biology, but wait a second. I've actually seen that before, over here when I was thinking about strategy games or something else.” You start to realize that you're really asking the same question, or maybe a slightly different question in a completely different context, where the consequences of your approach or of whatever you're developing are very different. That's very exciting to me.

Q: What technological developments do you see as having the potential to change computer science the most in the future?

A: I'm very excited about artificial intelligence and machine learning. That’s an area where I see huge, huge potential benefits, and dangers, of course, going forward. Just in the last several years, ChatGPT and these large language models provided a huge step toward using these kinds of tools and ideas in the real world, on real applications. That has been very exciting, and I don't really see it going away.

Quantum computing is also very exciting. Recently, the technology has been catching up with the theory. There are some open questions, things that we, as humanity, don’t know: what questions quantum computers can answer more efficiently than classical computers. There’s a cool quantum algorithm called Shor's algorithm. More quickly, much more efficiently than a classical computer, it's able to factor very large numbers. A lot of our cryptography is based on prime numbers, and Shor's algorithm is very good at finding factors.

We also have to think about the dangers. One of the big things that people are afraid of when it comes to quantum computing is security and encryption. As we develop larger and larger quantum computers, things like banking online, all of our passwords—we have to think about how to address weaknesses in those kinds of systems.

Q: How does the Chico State Online MS in Computer Science program prepare students for that future?

A: Our students learn the groundwork—the foundation for all of these ideas. And certainly, we teach specific tools. A lot of our program is based on C++. That's the programming language that we focus on. In some of our web programming classes especially, there are specific tools that we use, but I think much more importantly than that, this program focuses on foundational knowledge and on developing problem-solving skills, critical-thinking skills.

Computer science is not a stagnant field. It's a field that changes extraordinarily rapidly. A tool that we may have taught 10 years ago may be gone now; it may be the case that nobody uses it, or it may have changed. There are updates constantly. As you think about going out into the real world and trying to get a job, a lot of larger companies may use some proprietary tool that they've developed in-house. And they're willing, of course, to teach you how that works, so what they're looking for isn't, “Do you know what this tool is?” They're interested in, “Do you know the concepts behind this tool? Will you be able to pick up the tool and be able to use it quickly, or are we going to have to support you through a steep learning curve?” One thing that this program and the faculty do very well is prepare students to hit the ground running, be flexible, be ready to learn new things as they come up. Continued learning and development are hugely important skills.

Those foundational concepts don't change; they’re useful no matter what you're looking at. In particular, everything that we develop, all of the problems that we work with, all of the algorithms are training your brain to think algorithmically, to problem-solve. These critical thinking skills—that's what's really useful.

Q: How do you see the Online MS in Computer Science program helping graduates set themselves apart in the job market?

A: We focus on preparing students to go out into the real world. Feedback that we've gotten from industry has been that our students are prepared. When they come in, students from other universities often need more support. They know certain tools, but sometimes the transition to a new tool is challenging.

Very frequently, though, our students have that flexibility. They’re ready to make those connections. “I know how I did this with another tool, and you're telling me this is a new tool. It does the same thing, but in a bit of a different way. I can identify these new patterns pretty easily and map them to what I already know.” And that makes companies happy. People coming from our program are able to contribute meaningfully much more quickly.

Q: What can you tell us about graduates from the program?

A: I am just getting to the point where recent graduates are reaching out to check in and talk about what they've been up to. It's always great to hear how enthusiastic they are about where they’ve ended up and how they’re using their degree. I've had a couple of students go on to PhD programs. One is at Michigan State and the other at UC Merced. We’ve had a lot of students go to Chevron and to Lawrence Livermore National Lab. I also had one student who ended up getting a job at NVIDIA. He's very happy there, doing some exciting things with GPUs.

Q: Why should a student study computer science at Chico State?

A: It’s important to pursue what you're passionate about. Going through any graduate program is going to be extraordinarily difficult if you're not interested in the material and you're just doing it because you know there are jobs out there. But if it's something that you're passionate about, you're much more willing to put in the hours. It's not easy. It takes a lot of work, a lot of mental time and energy. But it's well worth it, with so many interesting things that you get to learn.

Having people from biology or physics or math or history or any other discipline coming into computer science and pursuing a deeper understanding of how these tools work and then being able to apply those tools to their original discipline—I think that's awesome. It’s one of the things that I think is so cool about computer science: It's used all over the place, so you can have people from such diverse backgrounds come together and talk about ideas.

Our faculty is excellent. They are experts in their fields, but they also love teaching and they're very happy to spend time with students. We always have office hours, but I haven't met a professor yet who sticks rigidly to those. If there's a student who can't meet during office hours in a particular week and wants to meet at a different time, that’s easy to set up. Talking, meeting with students on the weekends and in the evening is not uncommon at all.

Faculty members are very approachable and excited to meet with students outside of class to discuss ideas, to go off on tangents. There have certainly been times when a student has asked me a question and I answer, but then we add more questions, and all of a sudden, 10, 20 minutes later, we're off in the weeds somewhere. That's a lot of fun and I think all of the faculty would agree with that. They're happy to have those kinds of discussions.

It's a very collaborative faculty. Everyone is interested and happy to work together. In some places, you find people that are kind of protective—"This is my class and this is my material, and don't touch it. It's only mine." That's certainly not the case here. When I worked with Professor Attarwala on the 310 class for the Online MS in Computer Science program, a lot of that was his material. I was able to meet with him, talk about things that he'd done, and see the way that he has approached that material. We swapped ideas, assignments, problems, and approaches to teaching different concepts. That was a lot of fun, and it's something that we will continue to do.

Q: What do you wish someone had told you before you applied to graduate school?

A: When I was an undergraduate student, I was interested in computer science. I started taking computer science classes and at some point, I took the software engineering class. For a combination of different factors, I just didn't enjoy it very much. That was a very difficult class for me. After I'd taken it, I had a bit of an existential crisis. I thought, “Well, this is what computer scientists do: It's software engineering. If I didn't like this class, then what am I supposed to do?”

That got me looking around and that's when I recognized, "That's not all there is." There is graduate school and research, and there are all of these different, very exciting things that you can do in computer science. I wish I had known that earlier. It would've saved some heartache. To be open to all of the different kinds of possible applications, everything that you can pursue—those are important things to keep in mind.

To become a leader in computer science, learn from experts who love it as much as you do.

Dr. Carter Tillquist, Dr. David Zeichick, and the other seasoned industry veterans of Chico State’s Online MS in Computer Science program will help you build the problem-solving skills and essential foundational knowledge that can define your career success. Be ready for in-depth conversations with these supportive, engaging faculty authorities who are passionate about teaching.

If computer science lights you up, this is where your people are. Take the first steps toward joining Chico State’s outstanding community: Review the admissions schedule and financial aid opportunities, and schedule a call with an admissions outreach advisor today.