The CRA Bulletin frequently shares news, timely information about CRA initiatives, and items of interest to the general community.
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The CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) made several contributions to the 2016 SIGCSE conference. Using data collected through the Data Buddies Project, the CERP team presented three talks during the event.
A new coalition, the Computer Science Education Coalition, whose mission is to focuses on securing federal funds to provide computer science education to all K-12 students, launches today.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) is pleased to honor Fred Schneider, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor and Chair of Computer Science at Cornell University, with a Service to CRA Award for his work with the organization. Fred was a member of the CRA Board from 2007 to 2016, during which time he thought deeply about how to have positive impact on the computing research community and spearheaded several key initiatives.
CRA members have elected four new members to its board of directors: Penny Rheingans, Shashi Shekhar, Josep Torrellas, and Min Wang. Current board members Chris Johnson and Ron Brachman were re-elected to the CRA board. Their terms run from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2019. Retiring from the board as of June 30, 2016 are Tracy Camp, Ann Condon, Laura Haas, and Fred Schneider. CRA thanks them all for contributions during their service on the board.
Yesterday, Rolling Stone released part one of a special report on the artificial intelligence revolution. The article opens with a quote from Pieter Abbeel, a researcher at UC Berkeley and one of CRA’s 2016 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Awardees. Pieter is one of three winners of the inaugural award which recognizes individuals for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing.
The CRA Board of Directors is pleased to announce its selections for the 2016 CRA Awards. Maria Klawe was selected as the 2016 recipient of the CRA Distinguished Service Award for her tireless commitment to and profound impact on the computing research community. Ayanna Howard was selected as the recipient of the 2016 A. Nico Habermann Award Winner for her sustained commitment to increasing diversity, combined with her distinction in research.
CERP is thrilled to launch its new data visualization website displaying Data Buddies data. Dr. Ron Metoyer, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame designed the website, alongside a team of student developers and CERP Research Scientist, Dr. Burçin Tamer.
The Education Committee of the Computing Research Association (CRA-E) is proud to announce three winners of the inaugural CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award. Congratulations to the 2016 award recipients: Pieter Abbeel, from the University of California, Berkeley, Marie desJardins, from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Judy Goldsmith from the University of Kentucky. These outstanding individuals are recognized for providing exceptional mentorship, undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students to research-focused graduate programs in computing. The 2016 selection committee included: Nancy Amato (Texas A&M University, committee chair); Eric Aaron (Vassar College); Pat Morreale (Kean University); and Barbara Ryder (Virginia Tech). This year’s awards will be presented at the 2016 CRA Conference at Snowbird.
Are you looking for information for your students, academic and industrial researchers, or CRA’s diversity efforts? Look no further. CRA has dedicated webpages with targeted information on each of these topic areas.
President Obama used his weekly radio address today to announce a new Computer Science Education initiative that would allow states to take the lead in increasing access to CS in K-12 classrooms. The initiative, which will be included in the President’s FY 2017 Budget Request to Congress on February 9th, will designate $4 billion for states available over 3 years, and $100 million directly for districts, to increase access to K-12 computer science education “by training teachers, expanding access to high-quality instructional materials, and building effective regional partnerships.” He will also direct NSF to spend more than $120 million over the next five years to support and train CS teachers.
This year the AAAS annual meeting will be held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., close to CRA headquarters. To help engage the public with fun hands on science activities, CRA was invited to participate in AAAS’s Family Science Days on Saturday and Sunday, February 13–14, 2016 from 11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will also have a panel at the conference on the Friday, February 12, at 3 p.m. titled, “The Confluence of Computing and Society: Emerging Themes in Socio-Technical Systems.” CCC Chair Greg Hager, CCC Vice Chair Elizabeth Mynatt, and an additional speaker will offer perspectives on future ideas and challenges for technology innovations at global societal scales.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) produces resources that standardize and establish best practices in the field. Most recently, last spring the CRA Board of Directors released its latest Best Practices Memo, “Incentivizing Quality and Impact: Evaluating Scholarship in Hiring, Tenure, and Promotion.” Distinguishing between quality and quantity is key to promoting the future growth of the computing and information field. The memo advocates adjustments to hiring, promotion, and tenure practices as well as to the publication culture. Below is a summary of the reports main points.
Two CRA surveys are due January 22.
Taulbee Survey. The main part of the Taulbee Survey is still in progress. This includes data on student degrees and enrollment, faculty, research expenditures, and the every-three-years Profiles questions about department space, teaching load, and graduate student recruitment.
January is National Mentoring Month, a great time to learn how mentoring can help support students and professionals in computing research, and in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) more generally. Mentoring is especially important for individuals in STEM from underrepresented groups in promoting persistence and success in education and professional settings. Effective mentoring programs help mentors and mentees consider various attributes of their identities and experience, like race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and educational background, which may influence their persistence and success. Although effective programs aim to support the whole person, gender identity and expression and sexuality orientation are often overlooked.
This year’s nominees were a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several were authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others had made presentations at major conferences, and some had produced software artifacts that were in widespread use. Many of nominees had been […]
The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) is pleased to provide a new “undergraduate research listing service” for faculty and other researchers to advertise (at no cost) undergraduate research opportunities and for undergraduates to find such opportunities. The site can be found here:http://conquer.cra.org/research-opportunities.
The CCC’s Nominating Subcommittee invites nominations (including self-nominations) for members to serve on the CCC Council for the next three years, beginning July 1, 2016.
This year, the award was presented to Farnam Jahanian, who serves as Provost at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). From 2010 to 2014, he was Assistant Director (AD) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is considered the highest profile government position for computer science research.
CRA is honored to have a prestigious group of computing researchers serve on its Board of Directors. These individuals volunteer their time to run CRA’s programs and committees and to develop and lead new initiatives. In this new series, CRA Board Member Profiles, we will highlight our board members and their contributions to the organization. Following is a profile on CRA Vice Chair Susanne Hambrusch.
CRA has launched a survey about the significant increases many institutions are seeing in undergraduate computer science course enrollments (often referred to as the enrollment boom). This is a question of deep concern to many in our community. The survey is a unique opportunity to measure, assess, and better understand enrollment trends and their impact […]
In the early stages of her career, Ann Quiroz Gates felt how many other students of underrepresented groups often feel – not sure she would be able to receive an advanced degree in computing. Over time, her confidence increased; she earned her Ph.D. and has committed to making sure others also succeed in the computing field.
The Computing Research Association’s Education Committee (CRA-E) seeks up to two Ph.D. students to serve as Fellows. This is an opportunity for graduate students in computing-related fields to gain experience serving on a national committee that serves the field.
CRA is gearing up for its biennial Career Mentoring Workshop (CMW) on February 22-23, 2016. The CRA CMW is a great opportunity for assistant professors, and individuals just starting as industrial researchers in the computing and information fields to get career advice and participate in mentoring activities. To get a first hand perspective on what to expect, I spoke with Julia Stoyanovich, from Drexel University. Julia has been fortunate enough to attend two workshops. She attended her first workshop in 2012 as part of the Computing Innovation Fellows program, followed by the 2014 workshop as an assistant professor at Drexel University.
The Computer Research Association (CRA) has recently released a cumulative report from two workshops held by CRA and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on big data in education. Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, was the intellectual lead for this effort.
The Computing Research Association invites nominations for the 2016 CRA Distinguished Service Award and A. Nico Habermann Award.
CRA is pleased to announce a new award program that honors faculty members in computing who have made a significant impact on students they have mentored. The CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes faculty members who have provided exceptional mentorship and undergraduate research experiences, and, in parallel, guidance on admission and matriculation of these students […]
The biennial Career Mentoring Workshop will be offered by the Computing Research Association on February 22 and 23, 2016 at The Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Va.
The 2015 CRA Taulbee Survey will be starting soon. There are a couple of new features this year:
The survey will be split into two parts: salary and everything else. This allows us to set an earlier deadline for the salary section in order to produce a preliminary salary report in December, while giving departments more time to collect and enter the information in the rest of the survey.
The every-three-years Department Profiles section of the survey will be included this year. These questions cover teaching loads, floor space, graduate student recruitment, staff, and details on sources of research funding.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce the annual CRA Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. The award is a terrific way to recognize your best student researchers and your department.
As I step up as Chair of the CRA Board of Directors, I’d like to share my thoughts about the organization, what it is doing, and what our next steps will be.
