Faculty

Amber Bocquin
Amber teaches in the Math and Computer Science departments, is known for leading international trips, and plays a mean game of soccer most weekends.

Dom Rosato
Dom is originally from Seattle, teaches in the Math and Computer Science Departments, and on weekends enjoys working on his house and playing with his Corgi, Hilary.

Richard White
Richard teaches physics in the Science department as well as chairing the Computer Science department. He likes writing programs, going rockclimbing, and playing with his Bernedoodle Lola.

Program History

The history of Poly's use of computers goes back to the 1980s when Dave Kressen was the Director of Computer Education. And in the 1990s, Math teacher Jon Fay taught the AP Computer Science course.

For a time, CS courses disappeared from the Upper School. The modern era of computer science at Poly began in January, 2010, when Richard White designed and began teaching the Intro to Computer Science elective. A demand for more challenging curriculum resulted in the return of AP Computer Science A in 2013. Interest in a post-AP course for motivated students resulted in the creation of Advanced Topics in Computer Science, which ran for the first time in January, 2017.

These three courses form the core of Poly's Computer Science offerings. See more about Poly's CS courses here.

Additional CS courses have been developed in recent years. Dom Rosato, in addition to teaching sections of the AP Computer Science A course, developed Exploring Math with Programming, and more recently the popular Introduction to Machine Learning course. Amber Bocquin developed the Creative Coding: Generative Art course, and is teaching Intro to Computer Science later this year.

A Commitment to Openness

The Poly Computer Science program has historically used open and free development tools, from programming languages to integrated development environments. Our teaching has benefited from open access to others' materials, including online tools such as Nick Parlante's CodingBat and Runestone Academy's online textbooks.

In the same spirit we endeavor to share our own materials with educators and students. In some cases those materials have been released under Creative Commons or other licenses. In other cases, copyrighted material belonging to individual Poly teachers has been made available here for Fair Use by others in the educational community.

For further information, please see the Materials page.

Next Steps

The Polytechnic School Computer Science Department is working to solidify its presence in the Upper School program and to further revise its course offerings. For further information about our program, please contact us!