Charles Riedesel, assistant professor of practice in computer science and engineering, is retiring from the College of Engineering after 25 years, starting as chief undergraduate advisor for the department.
Riedesel is known for his devotion to the successes of students through recruiting and advising. He received the University's James V. Griesen Exemplary Service to Students Award (2009) and was recognized eight times with the university’s Parents’ Recognition Award.
In 2015, he established the Dr. Charles Riedesel Outstanding Academic Advising Award, a yearly university-wide award which recognizes an exceptional faculty or staff member who “directly delivers advising services to undergraduates.”
Additionally, Riedesel has been faculty advisor for many competition programming teams, having eight teams over fourteen years that qualified for the annual Association of Computation Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals. He has also been an advocate for computer science education and engaged in working groups with SIGCSE’s ITiCSE conferences.
Riedesel has taught many courses, including helping to create CSCE 10 introductory course, which he based on the College of Engineering’s ENGR 10. Among his favorite classes were CSCE 230 Computer Organization and CSCE 155N Intro to Computer Science.
“With my first programming class in 1969, my curiosity was whetted with the question of how electricity could be harnessed to make computing happen,” Riedesel said of CSCE 230. “It took years to find out, and ever since I have loved being able to share the answer with my students.”