UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mary Beth Rosson, professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), retired on June 30. Rosson served in many leadership roles throughout her career with the University.
“Dr. Rosson’s contributions to the college played a pivotal role in its growth,” said Andrew Sears, dean of the College of IST. “Her impact on instruction, research and programs helped attract the high-quality students and faculty that have made Penn State a leader in the field. I wish her all the best in her well-deserved retirement.”
When Rosson came to Penn State as a professor in 2003, IST was a school and not yet a college, and the Westgate Building was under construction.
“I spent the first few years at Penn State helping to expand our offerings in human-computer interaction (HCI),” Rosson said, “and helping to develop new courses for both undergraduate and graduate education.”
Rosson cofounded Computer-Supported Collaboration and Learning Lab, which was later renamed the Laboratory for Collaboration and Innovation. She eventually moved into leadership roles in the college and served as associate dean for undergraduate studies from 2012 to 2014, interim dean of IST from 2014 to 2015, associate dean for undergraduate and graduate studies from 2015 to 2019 and director of graduate programs from 2021 to 2022.
“I worked with Mary Beth for more than 20 years,” said Steven Haynes, teaching professor in the College of IST. “She was an understanding and effective mentor to me and many other faculty and graduate students. In her leadership roles, she was a force for change and progress. I will miss her thoughtful and energetic contributions to the college.”
Rosson said that as a leader and academic administrator, she was able to have a greater impact on the college.
“I oversaw the creation of undergraduate programs in HCI, social and organizational informatics, cybersecurity and data sciences and formalized processes of peer teaching evaluation, teaching assignments and the assignment of teaching assistants,” she said.
At the graduate level, Rosson helped establish doctoral requirements, redevelop the introductory doctoral core course and revamp the qualifying exam that all doctoral students take after their first year.
“Along the way, I worked closely with many of our fantastic staff,” she said, “including Amy Stever, assistant dean for academic services; Lisa Lenze, director of the Office of Teaching, Learning and Assessment; and many others.”
Lenze — who worked with Rosson on academic programs, curriculum assessment, honors education, student engagement and other academic services — said that Rosson always had students’ goals and needs at heart.
“Working with Mary Beth was working with the best of the best,” she said. “She was a fantastic advocate, a creative problem-solver, a superb mediator and facilitator, a seasoned systems thinker and a willing community member who contributed directly to solving both interesting and difficult problems. I respect her intellect, leadership, integrity and compassion. She will be greatly missed.”
Stever said that Rosson was an incredible mentor during her professional career journey, which began in 2010 as a leader of IST’s online programs.
“Mary Beth included me in challenges and decision-making processes that led to a better integration of resources and ultimately a more quality experience for students and faculty,” Stever said. “I am honored to have served under her tenure and witness her dedication to IST and her colleagues. I thank her for all of the guidance, advice and constructive criticism that helped me become a more informed academic administrator.”
Rosson earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Trinity University in 1977 and a doctoral degree in human experimental psychology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1982.
“I was always interested in psychology,” she said. “I was fascinated by the stuff on sensory systems and decided to specialize in physiological psychology.”
But, Rosson said that when she found out physiological psychology meant doing operations and dissections on animals, she switched to cognitive psychology to design clever experiments and build mathematical models and computer simulations of the results.
“In support of those interests, I learned some basic programming skills,” Rosson said, “and as a psychologist, I couldn’t resist trying to understand more about how people learned and used computers.”
She said that she was thinking about people and computing before there was an academic area of HCI. An internship with IBM during her doctoral program led to her first job in 1982.
“For the next 11 years, I was part of a large computer science department at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, one of the birthplaces of HCI,” Rosson said. “That’s also where I started collaborating with Jack Carroll.”
Rosson and Carroll — currently a distinguished professor of IST at Penn State — were recruited as a couple by Virginia Tech, where they spent 10 years as faculty members.
“It turns out that HCI was a good fit with modern computer science departments, so Jack and I went in as professors of computer science,” said Rosson. In 2003, the couple left Virginia Tech to join Penn State.
Rosson and Carroll have been married for 40 years. Their daughter Erin and son-in-law Scott recently gave birth to Rosson’s first grandchild, Zoey Marissa.
“That little girl is taking up most of my time and attention lately, as you can imagine,” Rosson said.