Openings

Doctoral students

Dr. Proctor advises doctoral students in the Graduate School of Education's Curriculum, Instruction, and the Science of Learning PhD program Learning Sciences track. Applications for fall 2025 admission are due January 1. If you are potentially interested in beginning a PhD with Dr. Proctor in a future year, please email Dr. Proctor. We would love to invite you to join a lab meeting, or to chat with a current student.

Undergraduate research assistants

Dr. Proctor often has funding available to hire undergraduate research assistants. If you are currently a UB undergraduate and are interested in joining our lab, please email Dr. Proctor.

High school computer science teacher

Chris leads UB's partnership with Buffalo Public Schools in the design of a new university-assisted community high school, which will bring UB faculty and students into the school and bring high school students to UB through co-teaching and paid internships.

The school's curriculum is designed around computing as an interdisciplinary nexus. Every student will take a full year of computer science (CS) in the 10th grade, and will have the option to continue. The CS course is embedded within a 9-12 research track which weaves together the other subjects and applies this knowledge to community problems through youth participatory action research (YPAR) as well as connecting to teaching and research at UB.

We are looking for a founding CS teacher for this school. The school is fully-funded, with commitments in place from UB and BPS; we are set to start a ninth-grade cohort in fall 2025. Over the last decade, the field of computing education research has seen how hard it is to embed meaningful CS into the existing structure of schools; this is an opportunity to be part of designing a school with computing at the center from the ground up. The job has not posted yet, but informally this is what we're looking for:

Position description

You would be an employee of Buffalo Public Schools.
You would be joining Research Lab High School, a small innovative school close to UB's south campus. For the last nine years, RLHS has built a close-knit team of educators creating a rigorous and responsive educational environment where every student is known and cared for. (RLHS will transform into this newly-designed school, starting with next year's 9th grade cohort.)
The position will be roughly 50% teaching a 10th-grade CS course and 50% teacher on special assignment, supporting integration of CS into other disciplines and building partnerships between the school and UB.
The position will likely be a 12-month position, with supplemental funding covering your salary over the summer.

Required:

NY Initial or professional certification (we have some flexibility in which certification area).
If not certified in K-12 CS, willingness to earn certification through UB within two school years.
Willingness to collaborate closely with colleagues, community partners and UB faculty, imagining new possibilities and building programs to make them into realities.

Preferred:

NY K-12 CS certification.
Academic or industry background in computer science. Proficient in Python.
Experience managing budgets, collaborators, and policies across institutions.
Familiarity with the structure and practices of universities.
Familiarity with policies and politics within a large urban public school district.

There is still a bit of flexibility in this position, but we are moving fast. Anyone potentially interested is encouraged to contact me at chrisp@buffalo.edu. I'd love to meet you and learn about the possibilities you can imagine in this role.