Paul Gries
Professor, Teaching Stream

Paul is a Professor, Teaching Stream in Computer Science in the Faculty of Arts and Science at the University of Toronto. He has written several textbooks, a livetext, and two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Coursera.

Paul earned a BA and an MEng, both in CS, from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It took him 3.5 years as a PhD student at the University of Toronto to figure out that he strongly prefers teaching to research, and became a Lecturer in 1999. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2004.

Paul has twice been awarded the University of Toronto Students' Union/Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students (2005, 2011), and has received the Faculty of Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award in 2006, the University of Toronto President's teaching award in 2011, and the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Teaching Award in 2012.

At various points in his life, Paul was captain of Yoghurt Culture (a summer-league soccer team back in high school), sang tenor in the Cornell University Glee Club, performed in a couple of Gilbert and Sullivan shows with the Cornell Savoyards, and batted .751 with the U of T CS summer softball team back when he was much younger. These days, Paul enjoys singing, good scotch, and intermittent sword fighting with the SCA, and has been known to enjoy good wine even though "wine" doesn't begin with an "s". He golfs as rarely as possible.

Awards

• Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Teaching Award, 2012.
• University of Toronto Students' Union and the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students (U.T.S.U./APUS) Teaching Award, 2011.
• President's Teaching Award, 2011.
• Faculty of Arts and Science Outstanding Teaching Award, 2006.
• SAC/APUS Undergraduate Teaching Award , 2005.
• Computer Science Student Union Award, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2012.
• Computer Science Student Union Award for work as a teaching assistant in 1996, University of Toronto.
• Teaching Assistant Awards for work as a teaching assistant in 1992 and 1993, Cornell University.

Publications

• Learn to Program: The Fundamentals, a 7-week MOOC that teaches the fundamental building blocks of programming using Python.
• Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code, a 5-week MOOC that teaches how to write efficient, maintainable programs.
• Jennifer Campbell, Paul Gries, Jason Montojo: Practical Programming, An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3.6. Third edition. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2013, 383 pages.
• Jennifer Campbell, Paul Gries, Jason Montojo: Practical Programming, An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python. Second edition. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2013, 375 pages.
• Jennifer Campbell, Paul Gries, Jason Montojo, Greg Wilson: Practical Programming, An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2009, 377 pages.
• Paul Gries, Volodymyr Mnih, Jonathan Taylor, Greg Wilson, Lee Zamparo: Memview: A Pedagogically-Motivated Visual Debugger. ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 19-22 October 2005, 5 pages.
• Paul Gries and David Gries: Frames and folders: a teachable memory model for Java. Proceedings Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges, 19-22 April 2002, 13 pages.
• David Gries and Paul Gries: A Multimedia Introduction to Programming Using Java. Springer Verlag, NY, 2004, 550 pages.
• David Gries and Paul Gries: ProgramLive, second edition. Data Description, Ithaca, NY, 2002, and John Wiley & Sons, NY, 2002. This intro to programming using Java is a livetext: a CD with over 250 recorded lectures with synchronized animation.
• David Gries and Paul Gries: A CodeWarrior Tutorial. Metrowerks Inc., NY, 2001. (With Data Description, Inc.) This is a multimedia manual on the use of CodeWarrior, the development environment produced by Metrowerks. It uses recorded lectures with synchronized animation.
• Paul Gries, Petra Hall and David Gries. The ProgramLive Companion. John Wiley & Sons, NY, 2001, 346 pages.