Archive of articles published in the 2005 issue.

Lazowska and Margolis to Receive CRA Service Awards


CRA is pleased to announce the winners of its 2005 service awards. The Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Ed Lazowska, the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Jane Margolis, Research Educationist, IDEA, UCLA Graduate School of Education Information Studies, will receive the A. Nico Habermann Award. The awards will be presented at ACM’s Awards Banquet in San Francisco on June 11, 2005.

In a More Balanced Computer Science Environment, Similarity is the Difference


Gender differences in computer science tend to dissolve—that is, the spectrum of interests, motivation, and personality types of men and of women becomes more alike than different—as the computing environment becomes more balanced. This finding is emerging from our ongoing studies of the evolving culture of computing at Carnegie Mellon as our undergraduate computer science (CS) environment becomes more balanced in three critical domains: gender, the mix of students and breadth of their interests, and the professional experiences afforded all students.

CRA Elects New Board Members


CRA recently elected five new members to its board of directors. Anne Condon (University of British Columbia), Richard A. DeMillo (Georgia Institute of Technology), Peter Lee (Carnegie Mellon University), J Strother Moore (University of Texas at Austin), and David Notkin (University of Washington) will serve three-year terms beginning July 1, 2005.

Computing, We Have a Problem…


The computing community—including the computing research community—suffers from one major problem: the public does not fully understand, and hence does not appreciate, what computing is and why computing and computing research are important. The bottom line is: We have an “image” problem, and it extends to our elected and appointed government officials, prospective students and their parents, some colleagues in other disciplines who use computing in their research, and the general public.

Thanks to Retiring Board Members


This year CRA bids farewell to several long-term board members whose contributions will be sorely missed. On behalf of CRA and the computing research community, we express our gratitude to these board members for their dedicated service. We highlight only a few of their many contributions here.

Challenges for Computing Research


Advances by computer science and engineering (CS&E) researchers have, over the past forty years, changed the world. Similar opportunities still exist, but excitement is tempered by challenges beyond our control. We explore issues facing our field and describe efforts by NSF’s CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) to better understand future opportunities and also to maximize the impact of current resources.

Interest in CS as a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen


An analysis of survey results from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (HERI/UCLA) indicates that the popularity of computer science (CS) as a major among incoming freshmen at all undergraduate institutions has dropped significantly in the past four years. Alarmingly, the proportion of women who thought that they might major in CS has fallen to levels unseen since the early 1970s.

President’s FY 2006 Budget Cuts IT R&D Funding Overall


Citing a need to continue to foster economic growth and address the deficit, as well as continue to prosecute the War on Terror, President Bush released an austere FY 2006 Budget Request that would sharply limit overall discretionary spending, including a significant reduction in the overall federal investment in information technology research and development. The President’s budget plan, released February 7, 2005, would cut overall spending in FY 2006 for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program—the federal crosscut for all agencies involved in funding information technology R&D—by 7 percent compared with FY 2005, decreasing the federal investment to $2.127 billion from $2.282 billion planned for FY 2005.

CRA Elects Officers to Two-Year Terms


The CRA board has recently elected its officers who will serve two-year terms (July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2007). Dan Reed (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) was elected Board Chair Lori Clarke (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) will serve as Vice Chair Carla Ellis (Duke University) was elected Secretary Phil Bernstein (Microsoft Research) was re-elected CRA’s Treasurer

CS Bachelor’s Degree Production Grows in 2004; Poised for Decline


This article reports on CS bachelor’s degree enrollments and production among Ph.D.-granting departments in the United States since the mid-1990s. For figures that group CS departments by rank, the rankings are based on information collected in the 1995 assessment of research and doctorate programs in the U.S. conducted by the National Research Council (see http://www.cra.org/nrc).