Dr. Justin Li Promoted to Associate Professor

“Professor Li has time and again gone above and beyond for students at Oxy. He's been an advisor for the Oxy Open Source Club, taught sessions for Oxy Open Source workshops, conducted research with students, and much more. Professor Li was the first faculty member I interacted with at Oxy as he was assigned to be my advisor for cognitive science during orientation week. Over the course of my four years at Oxy, Professor Li became someone I relied on, sought advice from, solved problems with, and someone I laughed with. His methodical teaching style and well-organized courses worked effectively with my learning style. I took a handful of classes with him and I found them to be fun, thought-provoking, and a safe place to ask questions and learn. There were numerous times that I reached out to him for help with coursework, career preparation, and general advice. He helped me understand specific data structures I struggled with and review technical interview questions I had been asked while job-searching. As one of my primary academic mentors, I attribute a large part of my interest in computer science to him as well as my current role as a software engineer.”

“Every professor at Occidental offers office hours, but Justin goes out of his way to extend hours if students need more help, and will further explain concepts, using different visualizations or analogies until his students understand. He’s very reluctant to “just give you the answer,” and will instead provide you with different frameworks of thinking, ask you to try again, and then give more tips. One particular example was when I was in Data Structures [COMP 229], and I was really having trouble explaining why merge sort has a runtime of O(n log(n)). Justin had me draw a picture representing the way the sort worked on the board, asking me questions along the way, making me justify my drawing. Then he asked me to think about the sorting using my diagram, talking through its steps. He spent about 30 minutes talking with me, until I had really mastered the concept. He is very committed to us learning the concept and the reasoning behind facts, so that when we are asked about them, we aren’t regurgitating material, but understand why it was true.

“He is an incredible instructor equipped with knowledge and wisdom far beyond his years and he is dedicated to his students, completely invested in their growth and development as scholars. Justin has made a truly profound impact on my life, and I have no doubt that he will continue to do so if he were part of the tenured faculty.”