Margaret M. Fleck

Teaching Professor
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 		3214 Siebel Center
201 N. Goodwin, Urbana IL 61801
voicemail: 217-265-6838
mfleck@illinois.edu
CV

Current/Recent Teaching

Artificial Intelligence (CS 440): Fall 2024 , Fall 2023 , and Fall 2022

Computer Science Orientation (CS 100): Fall 2023 and Fall 2022

Discrete Structures (CS 173): Spring 2021 and Spring 2020 .

Schedule (Fall 2024)

This shows the recurring parts of my schedule. Colored items happen most weeks. Uncolored items happen less often.

An office hour scheduled right after a class is presumed to start at the classroom and eventually drive over to my office.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
9-9:30 CS 440
CIF 0027		   CS 440
CIF 0027		   CS 440
CIF 0027
9:30-10    
10-10:30 office hour     CS 440 staff meeting office hour
10:30-11    
11-11:30   College
excecutive committee		     NLP seminars
11:30-12      
12-12:30 CS faculty
meetings
and lunches		      
12:30-1        
1-1:30        
1:30-2        
2-2:30       CS 440 staff meeting  
2:30-3        
3-3:30 Senate        
3:30-4        
4-4:30        
4:30-5        
5-5:30        
5:30-6     out of office    

Course Development and Materials

I focus on building materials that are easy for students to learn from. Specifically

As our class size as grown, and particularly since the pandemic lockdown, I have become increasingly interested in techniques for making instruction scale well while preserving the most valuable aspects of in-person time and human feedback

Discrete Structures (CS 173):

Some specific challenges in teaching discrete mathematics:

I've also been working on techniques for authoring and maintaining large sets of exam questions.

Artificial Intelligence (CS 440)

Fleck and Har-Peled lecture notes for Intro to Theory of Computation (CS 273) which I taught from Spring 2006 to Spring 2008.

Back in the 90's, I developed a laboratory-based computer vision course.

Research

My recent research centers around understanding conversational speech, particularly unsupervised algorithms that learn word boundaries from transcribed speech. I am also interested in use of prosodic features (e.g. stress, duration) in language modelling and language acquisition.

I worked in image understanding for many years and retain an interest in that area. I also have a long-term interest in building better programming language support for AI and have implemented a hybrid LISP/C package for computer vision applications and a hybrid Scheme/C package for linguistic research. At HP labs and U. Illinois, I have worked on systems that provide guidebooks and collect annotated records of personal experiences.

Publications:

Some useful resources:

Here are the full versions of two software releases. The world has changed too much for the code to run, but they are still useful documentation of the designs.

Former students in faculty positions

Student Research Projects

PhD theses

MS theses

MS-level projects, University of Iowa

Undergraduate projects

Academic links

Suggestions to instructors about academic integrity charges

Fun links

Some interesting ancestors: Mary Dyer and Susannah Martin. And a Dave Christman song about a historical event in my (small) hometown

Semi-academic links:

For steaming dumplings in quantity, Amazon sells a lovely German-made stainless Uzbek Mantovarka (brand Wetlif).

On-line stores that sell really good tea, all with their own distinctive strengths.

Palm frond unfolding

Portable sailboats

Music links