Archive of articles published in the 2022 issue.
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2022 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award. This year’s nominees are a very impressive group. A number of them were commended for making significant contributions to more than one research project, several are authors or coauthors on multiple papers, others have created papers for major conferences, as well as producing software, apps and algorithms.
Updated analysis shows that C/DREU participants are more likely to attend graduate school (36%) than students who participated in other REU programs (20%) and students who did not participate in an REU program (9%) at all.
As efforts to broaden computing have become more diverse, inclusive, and just, despite increasing enrollments in computer science, the percentages of historically excluded students have not changed much and many institutions are struggling to retain them. Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) are designed to introduce undergraduate students to research and present active training opportunities that may lead to students pursuing advanced academic degrees. Students are exposed early in their academic careers to research as problem solving, and therefore can develop critical thinking skills independently of coding skills. REUs provide an alternative source of funding while engaging with faculty and mentors who can nurture their interests and provide encouragement to persist in their degree program, often prior to declaring a major. In addition to providing early research engagement opportunities for first year and second year students with insufficient experience to compete for cooperative and summer internships, applying to and participating in REUs provide experience navigating application requirements (including writing a personal statement and gaining strong letters of recommendation, which helps them get to know faculty and vice-versa), collaborating on a project, and building a set of skills that would make them an attractive graduate school applicants. REUs are especially beneficial for first-generation, community college, and non-traditional students who may have limited exposure and access to graduate school, the application process, and hands-on opportunities to explore the field more deeply.
We share some key insights that have been gleaned from evaluation reports of mentors and participants in the CRA Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP)’s Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU) and Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) programs and our own firsthand experiences working with and mentoring undergraduate students.
This work uses the same methodology applied over eight years to study where Computer Science departments are choosing to invest faculty positions using data obtained from advertised tenure-track searches for the current hiring season. This work also provides an opportunity to continue to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty hiring in Computer Science for hires starting in 2022.
We analyzed ads from 400 institutions seeking to fill hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science. This number is a 70% increase from last year at this time (mid-November) and is a comparable number to the 394 institutions searching for 2020. The number of tenure-track positions sought is doubled from last year and up 6% from two years ago indicating a recovery in demand after a one-year drop due to the pandemic. The number of BS/BA institutions seeking faculty is at an eight-year high with top PhD and private PhD institutions at eight-year highs in the number of positions being sought.
The CRA Education Committee, with support from NSF, is organizing a Pre-Symposium Event for Teaching-Track Faculty at SIGCSE 2022. The event will be held on Wednesday, March 2 from 8:30 AM – 3:30 PM EST. We are now accepting applications to the event! Click here for more information and a tentative agenda. 2021 event information is available here.
To fulfill its mission, the CCC seeks visionary leaders — people with great ideas, sound judgment, and the willingness to work collaboratively to see things through to completion. The Council is composed of 20 researchers representing the breadth and diversity of computing today.
Please help the computing community by nominating outstanding colleagues for the Council.
The mission of Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research that aligns with pressing national and global challenges.
In accordance with the mission, the CCC is issuing a new call for proposals for visioning activities that will catalyze innovative research at the frontiers of computing. Successful activities will articulate new research visions, galvanize community interest in those visions, mobilize support for those visions from the computing research community, government leaders, and funding agencies, and encourage broader segments of society to participate in computing research and education.
Congress recently passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a bipartisan bill which includes $550 billion in new federal spending on infrastructure over five years. While designed as a traditional infrastructure bill, an analysis of the legislation by the Computing Research Policy Blog found several sections that are of note to the research community and the computing research community.
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC), like the rest of the world, continued to adapt and restructure our activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the unique issues this year brought, with the help of the computing research community, we were able to continue making an impact and provide support. Some highlights from the year are described below; please see our website for more details, as well as plans and opportunities for new activities in the coming new year.
Senior Program Associate Khari Douglas is leaving the CRA and the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) after six years. During his time with the CCC, Douglas made a lasting impact on the organization running countless workshops, supporting members of the council, acting as the unofficial IT person, and revamping and maintaining the CCC website for clearer communications with the community. One of his greatest contributions was taking the initiative to start a podcast, “Catalyzing Computing” where he interviewed members of the computing research community and provided the opportunity for all to get to know researchers and their work on a more personal level.
Help Enable the Future of Computing Research – Join CRA as a Program Associate
The Computing Research Association (CRA) seeks two highly-motivated individuals to join its staff as Program Associate or Senior Program Associate (depending on qualifications and experience). The positions involve work primarily with CRA’s Computing Community Consortium (CCC) subcommittee, which aims to catalyze the computing research community to pursue innovative, high-impact research. The CCC is run as a cooperative agreement between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and CRA.
