Kathryn Kinsley, M.S., CS, ’79; Ph.D., CS, ’83

Kathryn Kinsley became the first woman and “home grown” recipient of a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida in 1983.

In 1981, Dr. Kinsley co-founded Datawise, Inc., a computer consulting company. She and her business partners built their company to specialize in a new platform – microcomputers. Dr. Kinsley retired from Datawise at the end of 2017 after 36 successful years.

From the early years to the present day, Dr. Kinsley has watched UCF computer science grow from a small department to a full-grown, nationally recognized program.

“When I first came to UCF in the late 70’s, there were about a dozen graduate students and about the same number of faculty. Our access to the computer was through a card reader that read our punched cards and spit the output onto a printer 15-30 minutes later,” she recalls.

Dr. Kinsley has been named Engineer of the Year by the IEEE Computer Society, Outstanding Computer Scientist by the Association of Women in Computing, Outstanding Business Woman of the Year by the Women’s Executive Council of Central Florida and has received the UCF Alumni Professional Achievement Award.

She is past president of the Central Florida Women’s Resource Center, the Adult Literacy League, Florida Executive Women, Association for Women in Computing and the Central Florida High Technology Council, and serves on the UCF College of Arts and Humanities Advisory Committee. During their long-standing history of support for UCF, Dr. Kinsley and her husband Joe have awarded over 23 scholarships to deserving students.