Dr. Lewis has been a tenure-track faculty member at Santa Clara since 1975. During his tenure, Lewis established unique co-op and study abroad options for engineering students that fit within their normal undergraduate four-year plan, the first graduate-level academic certificate programs for working professionals, a new interdisciplinary major in Web Design and Engineering, and a interdisciplinary minor in Information Technology and Society. In 1988, his efforts led to the creation of the Computer Engineering department, providing its leadership for the first 18 years.
Since 2004 Lewis has focused on increasing and supporting the number and diversity of students studying engineering and technology - especially within the field of computing. His work has affected several generations of students from middle school through college, including the underserved and those underrepresented in computing. He has helped to developed new computer science curricula, established introductory computer science courses where none existed, provided professional development to increase the number of K-12 computer science teachers, provided high schools with more than a quarter million dollars in computers and robotics equipment, and is working at the school, district, county and state levels to strengthen the quality of K-12 education in computer science. As a result of his efforts, more than 270 K‑12 teachers have received training to teach material on programming, animation, robotics, web design and other topics in computer science. The courses they have taught are estimated to have introduced more than 10,000 students to computing since 2004, with the goal of motivating them to ultimately become producers and well as consumers of technology. Beyond the classroom, Lewis has offered summer camps for more than 2,000 middle and high school students, raising private and agency funding, recruiting instructors and university student volunteers, and handling all local arrangements.
Lewis is a founding member of the Alliance for California Computing Education for Students and School (ACCESS) that is working to improve K-12 computer science education policy in the state of California. He has served on the Career Technical Education Advisory Committee of the San Jose Unified School District and is a Pacesetter Member of the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Lewis has also served on several Review Panels, as a member of the Advisory Board of the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology from 2004 to 2006, as a member of the Parent-Teacher Advisory Committee on Technology of The Harker School in San Jose from 2003 to 2004, and as a volunteer instructor for the LEGO Mindstorm Robotics Club of Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino, California from 2005 to 2006.
In September of 2010, Lewis received Santa Clara University's Brutocao Family Foundation Award for Curriculum Innovation. At the awards ceremony, Lewis was recognized for
"…leadership in three major initiatives: First, he created a new interdisciplinary Bachelor's program. This program, which reaches across disciplinary, school and college boundaries to involve Computer Engineering, Communication, and Art and Art History, is attracting a growing enrollment, including a large number of women students, who remain underrepresented in engineering fields. Second, he has developed outreach programs to K-12 students to encourage them to pursue the study of computing. His innovative summer camps have reached more than 2,000 local K-12 students. To accomplish that goal, he secured about $700,000 in external grants, mostly from NSF. Third, he has led efforts to develop summer training programs for high-school computer science teachers, again with external funding and again extending opportunity beyond the University community in significant numbers. More than 200 local teachers have reinvigorated and updated their course offerings in computer science under our awardee's guidance. For three years he has served as the campus coordinator for the Sally Ride Festival, attracting young women to science and engineering. His work in curriculum innovation and outreach exemplifies dedication to student learning and community service."
Prior to joining the University in 1975, Lewis worked for six years at General Electric's Aerospace Division where he designed a fault-tolerant clocking system for one of the first triple-redundant automatic landing systems for commercial aircraft. He has consulted for a number of Bay Area companies, including the Singer-Link Company, where his design of new algorithms and a corresponding modular array of VLSI circuits became the basis of a new product line of real-time computer graphics systems.
