The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) has announced Judy Goldsmith, professor and associate chair in the UK Pigman College of Engineering Department of Computer Science, the recipient of the 2025 Harrold and Notkin Research and Graduate Mentoring Award.
The award, sponsored by the NCWIT Board of Directors, recognizes faculty members who have combined outstanding research accomplishments with excellence in graduate mentoring, as well as those who advocate for equity in computing fields at both local and national levels. It is awarded in memory of Mary Jean Harrold and David Notkin to honor their outstanding research, graduate mentoring, and efforts to broaden participation in computing.
Goldsmith, who has spent decades researching Artificial Intelligence (AI), is an associate editor for the Artificial Intelligence Journal and serves on program committees for several AI conferences. She also runs a weekly AI seminar that encourages undergraduates to explore research topics.
After expanding her research efforts to include ethics, Goldsmith has actively incorporated research into her own undergraduate and graduate classroom teaching, developing assignments and teaching methodologies for both her AI course and her computer ethics course that require students to engage with the research literature. Details of these assignments, along with curriculum suggestions and details of measurable outcomes including post-course surveys, have been published at multiple top computer science education events, including in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Computer Science Education and the Association for Artificial Intelligence program on Education in Artificial Intelligence.
Goldsmith has also been a part of multiple Birds of a Feather programs at the ACM Special Interest Group - Computer Science Education conference, the largest computer science education conference in the U.S., detailing another course she runs that uses science fiction to engage students with research in AI. She also co-authored the 2023 textbook, "Computer and Technology Ethics: Engaging Through Science Fiction."
Goldsmith has been active in encouraging students from a variety of backgrounds to pursue graduate studies in computing and served on multiple committees at UK that promote computer science and engineering education. She is also actively engaged with other computer science departments across the state, including Morehead State University, Western Kentucky University, and Northern Kentucky University. She speaks annually to undergraduate and graduate students at multiple universities about what it means to do research and how to identify potential sources of funding for graduate school.
Goldsmith has graduated more than two dozen Ph.D. and master’s students at UK, several of which credit their persistence in the computing field to Goldsmith. She is also always available to students—regardless of whether they are on her advising roster or not—for mentorship, advice and support.
See the full announcement from NCWIT with statements from her colleagues and students here.
