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= Vreda Pieterse = Vreda Pieterse is a South African computer scientist and lecturer. In the early 1980's she was recognized as the first qualified computer science teacher in South Africa. She has regularly published work on her research of the themes Transitive Closure Algorithms, Teamwork in Software Engineering, Teaching Computer Science, and Literate Programming.

Early life
Pieterse was born to parents Hein van der Merwe and Lucia van der Merwe and grew up in Pine Park, Johannesburg. Her mother was a housewife who stayed busy serving the community, especially through the NG Church. One of the church's main causes was to benefit the local quadriplegic society, which helped to start the Ra-Ma-In House. Pieterse's father was a civil engineer, and she has two older siblings-- Leonard and Hannes.

Education and Career
Pieterse had always wanted to be a teacher and was offered a government bursary to qualify as one. She attended the University of Pretoria, where she first declared a major in math and later an additional major in computer science, though the field was just emerging in 1973. The Computer Science department at the University of Pretoria was not founded until 1998. She earned a Bachelor of Science in math and computer science, graduating in 1975. She then completed her postgraduate work for a teachers diploma, and began teaching math in 1976. [1 ]

Her experience in programming began in 1974 when she attended a PL/I course at the University of Pretoria, as a part of her degree. From there, she began working at help desk in the University’s Computer Center. Here she assisted other students with programming languages such as COBOL, FOLTRAN, and APL. She was employed by IBM part time in 1975, where she gained experience with BASIC. Her knowledge and experience with coding in the 70's as the field was just emerging allowed her to complete a variety of free-lance projects where she created small to medium systems using a variety of programming languages and database tools.

Computer science was introduced as a school subject in the early 1980's. At this time, programs recruited math teachers to be trained in computer science, but since she already had a degree and working knowledge, she became the first qualified computer science teacher in South Africa.

Pieterse began her teaching career in 1976 at the Academia Secondary school in Windhoek, where she taught math and bookkeeping. After three years with this school, she was promoted to the acting head of the science department at the Augutinium State Training School. She still taught mathematics while she served as head. In January 1981, she was appointed to a lecturer position at the Windhoek Onderwyskollege. For a brief period in 1982, she was a senior researcher with the Human Science Research Council. From 1984 to 1990, she took a formal break from her career to raise and care for her family.

She returned to work in 1990, working as a Teaching Advisor at the Bethlehem Computing Centre. Here she taught programming courses and trained other teachers and students in the various uses of coding. In 1993 she began to work for Onderwyskollege Pretoria, where she lectured in various computing languages such as Pascal, Java, and Delphi. Along with her lecture courses, she was also responsible for the development and lecturing of a variety of computer literacy classes such as Word processing, Spreadsheets, and Web Authoring. She worked at this institution until 2001.

Pieterse is currently employed by the University of Pretoria where she has lectured courses in areas such as Software Engineering, Design Patterns, Operating Systems, and Netcentric Computing. In 1997, she completed a M.Sc in Computer Science, Cum Laude, at the university.

Research and Contributions to Computer Science Community
Vreda Pieterse has been contributing to the scientific community through her own research since the early 1990's. An archive of her work can be found on her domain from the University of Pretoria. Her areas of research fall under the categories of Transitive Closure Algorithms, Teamwork in Software Engineering, Teaching Computer Science, and Literate Programming.

Her most cited publication is "Software Engineering Team Diversity and Performance ," which she published in 2006.