Michael Horn Honored for Teaching Excellence
Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy Professor Michael Horn was awarded the Charles Deering Professor of Teaching Excellence Award for his innovative approach to computer science and his ability to inspire a lifelong love of learning—a critical skill in our rapidly changing world.
The award includes a salary stipend for the next three years and professional development funds. The term begins at the start of the 2025-2026 academic year.
The awards ceremony is Wednesday, May 21, in Guild Lounge on the Evanston campus. The event will be livestreamed.
Horn, who will become the Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Professor, is the eighth overall winner from the School of Education and Social Policy. He joins Lilah Shapiro (2023), Shirin Vossoughi (2022), Cynthia Coburn (2021), Danny M. Cohen and Mesmin Destin (2019), David Rapp (2015), and Dan McAdams (1995), all current SESP faculty members.
A professor of learning sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy and a professor of computer science in the McCormick School of Engineering, Horn is perhaps best known for teaching coding as a form of literacy. This pioneering idea not only makes coding accessible and fun but also helps students understand complex topics and shapes how they view themselves.
What further sets Horn apart, however, is that his impact extends well beyond the classroom and into the community, where he works with a small army of approximately 50 volunteer mentors, interns, and research assistants.
One of his main projects, TunePad, is a free, online learning platform that combines digital music production with Python code.
Over the last five years, he’s collaborated with a variety of organizations, including the McGaw YMCA, Truman College, and the Chicago Boys and Girls Club, to run afterschool and summer camp programs using TunePad.
Horn has also partnered with 10 Evanston schools to teach a quarter-long unit on Python code and music to approximately 650 fifth graders. Nearly 50 Northwestern undergraduates are paired with local teachers in this joint effort, which helps teachers develop cutting-edge computer science knowledge and allows undergrads to apply their expertise in the field.
This year, Horn also ran the first-ever BitCrush music+code competition for elementary, middle, high school and college students across Evanston. Students were paired with undergraduate coaches, and Horn’s team will study the link between participation in the event and identity.
“His passion for teaching seems to drive his every endeavor,” said Macey Goldstein, a former student and member of his lab. "Whether it’s designing and testing new teaching tools or running after-school programs and summer camps, he’s driven by his love of teaching. That passion shone through in every class he taught," she said.
“I fell in love with coding”
For Horn, coding has long been a way to help revitalize subjects that have become “painfully rote” in schools. As a child growing up in Houston, Horn played the viola, but he said he memorized the songs and never fell in love with music or played just for fun.
Learning how to code was a completely different—and transformative—experience. He was self-taught, took electives that he chose himself, spent hours working on games or other projects, planned out algorithms and even synthesized his own rudimentary sound effects. “I had no idea what I was doing, but that was liberating,” he said. “I fell in love with coding.”
As co-founder of the nation’s first joint learning sciences and computer science doctoral degree and director of the Tangible Interaction Design and Learning Lab (TIDAL), Horn emphasizes creativity and play in the design process, reaching students who might otherwise have pursued a different path.
At least three of Horn’s classes provide students with new ways of thinking about and understanding the world, long after they’ve left Northwestern.
In Introduction to Computer Programming, Horn intentionally blends the artistic and technical by applying Python to fields such as art, music, and data science. This approach helps students—who may later become journalists, doctors, performing artists, or entrepreneurs—practice using one skill set to learn something new.
In another class, Tangible Interactive Design and Learning, undergraduates design and build interactive science museum exhibits. In partnership with Oakton Elementary School in Evanston, Northwestern students set up pop-up science museums for kindergarten through fifth graders, giving them an opportunity to see how their work functions in the real world.
Horn, who was voted McCormick’s Computer Science Department Instructor of the Year in 2024, is co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction and a former associate editor for the Journal of the Learning Sciences.
His work has been exhibited at museums around the world including the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco), the Museum of Science (Boston), the Field Museum (Chicago), and the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley).
One of his most popular papers, which he co-wrote with School of Education and Social Policy professor Uri Wilensky, explored how to define computational thinking for math and science classrooms.
Horn earned his doctorate in computer science at Tufts University where he worked in both the Human-Computer Interaction Lab and the Developmental Technologies research group. He received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Brown University. He has also worked as a software engineer for Classroom Connect and iRobot Corporation.
“Mike is clearly dedicated to providing students with a strong foundation for lifelong learning by making education joyful and relevant, and well-deserving of this honor,” said School of Education and Social Policy Dean Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, the Carlos Montezuma Professor.