Industry Expert Interview – Exploring Career Paths and Industry Trends

 Interviewee: William Kerney

Institution: Clovis Community College 

Interviewer: M. Camila Caicedo

Date: 3 June 2025

Duration: 30 min

  1. Can you tell me about your academic and professional background?

    1. Professor Kerney attended UC San Diego and obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from there.

    2. As for his professional career, he worked for a defense contractor developing Virtual Reality applications and video games for several years, and then worked in various departments at UC San Diego, utilizing his computer science skills. After graduation, he worked on Virtual Reality educational programs and, after traveling around the country to train teachers on its use, transitioned into full-time teacher education with his own company. He also did a lot of freelance grant writing and computer science consulting.

  2. What made you want to pursue a career in computer science?

    1. Professor Kerney has always had a passion for technology, and he has known since second grade that he wanted to major in computer science. He found a book on programming computers and experimented with it, and it just seemed like magic to him; and he was hooked.

  3. How did you get started in teaching, and why did you work at Clovis Community College?

    1. He originally wanted to pursue a career in Cybersecurity or video games. Still, after working in different fields, he decided to teach as a way of giving back to the community. Initially, he wanted to work at Fresno City College, as he found an opening for a college algebra professor. Unfortunately, he was told he was not qualified to teach college algebra, despite having a master's degree in computer science. Later, he found an opportunity at Clovis Community College as a computer science professor, a position he has held for over 10 years.

  4. What is one of your favorite aspects of your career so far?

    1. Professor Kerney loves to see students grow and succeed as computer science professionals, teaching them the fundamentals of computer science. He especially likes it when they go on to do interesting things with their computer science skills.

  5. What are the most significant challenges in your role?

    1. Professor Kerney dislikes it when students are dishonest and cheat. It is challenging to deal with students who are dishonest, as they are ultimately harming themselves in the long run. In addition, he has encountered students who cheat and still deny it and try to hide it, overreacting even when facing the dean. 

    2. He has employed various approaches to mitigate cheating in different assignments, such as using a zero font in some assignment instructions. This allows students who cheat and input the instructions into ChatGPT to follow the instructions with a variant, thereby exposing those who were dishonest. He also worked on a similarity detector that would find students submitting similar homework assignments or old assignments.

  6. What emerging trends or technologies are shaping the industry?

    1. “Computer science has emerging trends and technologies all the time. Currently, AI is a significant issue that is rapidly changing the field, with professional programmers utilizing Cursor and Copilot for AI-assisted coding. AI is also changing every field that computer science works with.”

  7. What skills or attributes do you believe are most valuable for success in your field?

    1. At a basic level, you need the same life skills everyone needs - good time management, motivation to get started, critical thinking skills, and so forth. However, specifically for computer science, you need to be able to think deeply about a problem, break it down into smaller sub-steps, and then solve those smaller sub-steps while still keeping the bigger picture in the back of your mind. After you get the basics of computer science down (writing and reading programs, debugging, algorithms, etc.), you need to work to become self-sufficient so that you can solve problems by yourself without needing to rely on someone else to help you. An experienced computer scientist could be given a program to write in a language they’ve never written before and have it figure it out in a week.

  8. What advice would you give to students aspiring to enter this industry?

    1. Always be working on improving yourself. An hour+ each day doing something related to programming; could be reading a book on design patterns, or writing tic tac toe in a new programming language, or teaching yourself CSS, anything. Computer science is a lot of fun, but it is a long road that takes a lot of effort to get good, and so the best way to do it is to cultivate a habit of working on self improvement at least a little bit each day, and the next thing you know you’ll know a lot.


Post-Interview Reflection Report

Introduction

I decided to interview Professor William Kerney since he is a professional whom I respect within the industry of computer science. He currently works in Clovis community College as a professor, where he teaches four different courses through the school year, Programming Concepts and Methodology I (CSCI 40), Programming Concepts and Methodology II (CSCI 41), Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science (CSCI 26), and Computer Organization and Assembly Language Programming (CSCI 45). Additionally, I chose Professor Kerney because he is knowledgeable in different computer science areas. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego. He has also worked in Virtual Reality, game development, defense contracting, and teacher training. Interviewing him provided me with insights into the computer science industry as a whole, including its challenges and rewards. 

Summary

When Professor Kerney was young, he started his career with a love for technology in general. Ever since he found a book about programming in second grade, he said it felt like magic, and he was hooked. After he finished his education, he worked on the development of VR applications for a defense contractor. Later, he worked on educational virtual reality (VR) tools at the University of California, San Diego. Later, he began training teachers to incorporate virtual reality (VR) into their classrooms and started his own business. Finally, he now dedicates full time to education. 

Initially, he wanted to pursue a career in cybersecurity or the gaming industry, but after many years of work, he decided that he wanted to become a teacher. At the beginning, he wanted to teach at Fresno City College, but he was told that he was not qualified to teach College algebra, even though he had a master's degree in computer science. He was happy because he did not want to teach algebra either way. Later, he had the opportunity to work as a computer science instructor at Clovis Community College, which he accepted. Now he has been a professor there for over 10 years. 

He enjoys seeing students grow, succeed in their careers, and apply their knowledge in many ways. However, he struggles with academic honesty when students cheat. Professor Kerney says that cheating will have a long-term negative impact on students because they won't learn effectively. He hates it when students deny cheating after being caught. He has been using innovative methods to catch students cheating, such as using zero font for assignments, text that’s only detected when pasted into ChatGPT, and tools that identify similar submissions from past students.

Professor Kerney says there is a growing impact of AI on the world. He says that GitHub Copilot and Cursor are changing the way people write code, and AI is reshaping every industry connected to computer science. He also believes that some skills for success in this field are time management, critical thinking, he ability to break down complex problems into manageable sub-problems, and develop logical thinking. 

His advice for students is to practice programming every day, even for just an hour. Whether it’s reading a book, building a game, or learning a new language, the habit of consistency will help to improve. 

Reflection

I used to think that I could choose any path easily, but now I can see that I can still take my time, and perhaps the path I planned won't be where I end up in the future. The future is not clear, and will be full of challenges, but as long as I keep going, I will also enjoy my professional life. Academic integrity is fundamental to succeed. I agree with Professor Kerney that AI is everywhere. 

Future Steps

  • Build the habit of studying daily things related to coding.

  • Explore tools like Copilot or Cursor to become more familiar with AI

  • Strengthen my independence by working through problems on my own before asking for help.

  • Stay true to my values and respect academic integrity. 

  • Remain open to new opportunities since the future is unpredictable. 

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