Published: November 2012,  Issue: Vol. 24/No.5, Download as PDF

Archive of articles published in the November 2012, Vol. 24/No.5 issue.

Terrific CRA-W Mentoring Workshops at Grace Hopper 2012


CRA-W hosted another successful set of Career Mentoring workshops on the afternoon of Oct 3rd at Grace Hopper 2012 in Baltimore. Designed to be a “bite-sized” version of our two day Career Mentoring workshops, CRA-W sessions at Grace Hopper are organized into three tracks: Undergraduate, Graduate and Early Professional, each consisting of three one hour sessions. CRA-W has run these workshops at Grace Hopper since 2009. Our workshops consistently have a large number of attendees and receive very positive ratings on the Grace Hopper attendee survey. In 2012, all nine sessions had more than 70 attendees and the final session in the Graduate track on “Building Your Professional Network” had over 150 people learning about and actively practicing their networking skills. Slides from all the sessions are available on the CRA-W website on the Career Mentoring Workshops at Grace Hopper page.

Election Impacts


Washington remains configured for political gridlock after Tuesday’s elections, a fact which seems to portend two more years like the last two. But party leaders on both sides have indicated a willingness to work together in the new Congress, perhaps softening the hard line that built the so-called “fiscal cliff” towards which the country now hurtles. That willingness to compromise will be put to the test even before the new Congress is sworn in, as the lame duck session of the current Congress has two important deadlines looming before they can adjourn.

Highlighting Opportunities for the CISE Community


Computing, communication, and information technology are at the center of an ongoing societal transformation, form a pervasive intellectual fabric that connect a wide range of disciplines, and are crucial to achieving national priorities. Though many program solicitations launched over the last year have aimed to support this position for our discipline, let me highlight two recently announced exciting opportunities: Exploiting Parallelism and Scalability (XPS), and Cyber-Enabled Sustainability Science and Engineering (CyberSEES).

Counting Computing: CRA Taulbee Survey and NSF Statistics


When people in the computing field talk about numbers in computing – numbers of degrees granted, students enrolled, faculty, dollars in salary or research expenditures – they often refer to the annual CRA Taulbee Survey. But Taulbee is not the only source of information on computing. How do Taulbee results compare to some of the other available information?

The Grace Hopper Regional Consortium:


Several computing organizations work at the national level to increase women’s participation in computing, but few seek regional level transformation. Regional events overcome impediments to women’s broad and deep engagement in computing. Read full article.

The Computing Community Consortium:


The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has a standing RFP for activities with the potential to excite the computing research community, grow funding, and encourage broader segments of society to participate in computing research and education. This fall, the CCC funded visioning activities on Spatial Computing and Smarter Health.

CRA at Grace Hopper 2012


Over a period of four days in early October, nearly 3,600 computer- and diversity-minded attendees descended upon the city of Baltimore for the 2012 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Amongst the crowd of people and exhibitors was the CRA booth nestled in between the booths of our friends at the National Science Foundation and the Association for Computing Machinery.

2013 Leadership in Science Policy Institute Accepting Nominations


As part of its mission to develop a next generation of leaders in the computing research community, the CRA’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) announces the second offering of the CCC Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI), intended to educate computing researchers on how science policy in the U.S. is formulated and how our government works. We are currently seeking nominations for participants.