Dr. James D. Kiper served as Chair from 2010 to August 2020 and Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering since 1998.

He teaches a variety of courses across the curriculum, including various software engineering courses (introduction to software engineering, requirements engineering, and software quality and testing), programming courses, compilers, and automata and computability.

James Kiper’s research centers on aspects of software engineering, including design rationale, software risk assessment, and software testing. He has published with colleagues from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is also interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning. In this area, he has published articles with colleagues at Miami University about quantitative literacy across the curriculum. He is currently working with a researcher at Florida International University in research into computer science and software engineering pedagogy, starting in the area of software testing.

Dr. Kiper served many years on the University Senate where he served as chair of the Executive Committee for the 2012-13 school year and served on committees and task forces over the years, including the Information Technology Strategic Advisory Council, the Miami University Task Force on the Revision to the Miami Plan for Liberal Education, the University Senate, an ad hoc University Senate committee on revisions to the university’s course and curriculum approval process, co-leader of Faculty Learning Community on Quantitative Literacy, co-chair of the Miami University 2020 Strategic Planning committee, chair of the Executive Committee of University Senate, and the Fiscal Priorities and Budget Planning Committee.

Dr. Kiper received his BS in Mathematics from Olivet Nazarene College, MS in Mathematics from Ohio State University, MS in Computer Science from Ohio State University, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Ohio State University.

• Software engineering, software risk assessment, design rationale. Advances in support for the early phases of software development, that is requirements engineering and design, can have great leverage in reducing problems in subsequent phases of a development process. Techniques and tools that can help in achieving requirements, reducing risk, and capturing and analyzing design rationale give engineers and managers important leverage in system development.

Academic Experience

• Professor, Miami University, 1998 –present 
• Associate Professor, Miami University, 1992 –1998 
• Assistant Professor, Miami University, 1986 –1992 
• Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University, 1985 –1986 
• Assistant Professor, Chairman, Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, 
• Mt. Vernon Nazarene College, 1982 –1984 
• Lecturer, Ohio State University, Summer 1982 
• Instructor, Mt. Vernon Nazarene College, 1978 –1982

Consulting/Professional Experience

• Visiting Instructor, Computer Science Department, Waikato University NSF Review team member for the College Science Instrumentation Program, Washington, D.C., January, 1986
• NASA Summer Faculty Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, California, 1986 –1987, 1994 –1995
• Programmer, Marathon Oil Company, Summer 1981

• Association for Computing Machinery, ACM 
• Special Interest Group in Software Engineering, and Computer Science Education
• IEEE Computing Society

• Suarez, Scott A., John Karro, James Kiper, David Farler, Blaine Mcelroy, Benjamin C. Rogers, Ben Stockwell, And Taylor Young,  A Comparison of Computer Generated and Naturally Occurring Foraging Patterns in Route Network Constrained Spider Monkeys, American Journal of Primatology,  2013, Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), DOI: 10.1002/ajp.22222
• Rose Marie Ward, Monica C. Schneider, and James D. Kiper, "Development of an Assessment of Quantitative Literacy for Miami University", Numeracy, Advancing Education in Quantitative Literacy, Volume 4, Issue 2 (July 2011).
• Gerald C. Gannod, Kristen M. Bachman , James D. Kiper, Glenn J. Platt, Robert Howard, and Micah Cooper, “App Development in the Miami University Mobile Learning Center”, CSEET Smartphones in the Curriculum Workshop, May 2011.
• Gregory Gay, Tim Menzies, Omid Jalali, Gregory Mundy, Beau Gilkerson, Martin Feather and James Kiper, Finding robust solutions in requirements models,  Automated Software Engineering, Volume 17, Number 1 / March, 2010.
• Burge, J., Kiper, J. Capturing collaborative design decisions and rationale, In: Design, Computing, and Cognition ‘08, J. Gero (Ed.), Springer, pp. 221-235, 2008.
• Douglas Troy, D. Steven Keller, James Kiper and Lei Kerr, “First Year Engineering: Exploring Engineering through the Engineering Design Loop,” Proceedings of Frontiers in education, October, 2008.
• Martin S. Feather, Steven L. Cornford, Kenneth A. Hicks, James D. Kiper and Tim Menzies, “Application of a broad-spectrum quantitative requirements model to early-lifecycle decision making,” IEEE Software, 25(2):49-56, 2008.
• Michael T. Helmick, James D. Kiper, Janet Burge, Valerie Cross, and Gerald Gannod,
• “Incorporating Wikis Into Software Repository Mining”, Proceedings of the Wikis for Software Engineering (Wikis4SE) Workshop, Montreal, October 21, 2007.
• James Kiper, Julian Richardson, Martin Feather, “Optimizing the V&V Process for Critical Systems”, Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, July 7-11, 2007, London, UK.
• Steve Cornford, Martin Feather, and James Kiper,  “Measuring and Reducing Risk in Acquisition of New Technology,” Proceedings of the Eighth Science and Engineering Technology Conference, April 17-19, 2007, Charleston, SC.
• Martin Feather, Steve Cornford, James Kiper, Tim Menzies, “Experiences using Visualization Techniques to Present Requirements, Risks to Them, and Options for Risk Mitigation,  Proceedings of the International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Visualization, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 11, 2006.
• Burge Janet, Valerie Cross, James Kiper, Pedrito Maynard-Zhang, and Steve Cornford, “Enhanced Design Checking Involving Constraints, Collaboration, And Assumptions,”  Proceedings of the Design, Computing, and Cognition Conference, July 10-12, 2006, Einhoven, Netherlands.
• James D. Kiper, A Framework for Characterization of the Degree of Integration of Software Tools; International Journal of Systems Integration, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1994. 
• James Kiper; Structured Testing of Rule-based Expert Systems; ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology. Vol.1, No. 2, April 1992, pp. 168-187.