The next CRA Deans Council Meeting will occur May 29-30, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.

May 2025 Theme: The Future of Colleges of Computing

What is the future of colleges of computing? What will their missions be five and ten years from now? What are the paths for reaching these futures?

This is a dynamic period for colleges of computing. Changes either work against or align with college priorities. Working against priorities, machine learning technology is advancing at an astonishing pace, much of it driven by the private sector. Quantum technologies, including quantum communication, quantum sensing, and quantum computing, are also rapidly advancing, again driven by significant private-sector investments. These pressures shift research away from academic leadership roles, steering it either toward industry collaboration or niche areas overlooked by industry. Ethical issues surrounding information and computation have also come to the forefront, ranging from the widening digital divide and underrepresentation of certain populations in large language models (LLMs), to the exploitation of personal information and the weaponization of social media. Interdisciplinary research involving political scientists, computer scientists, and philosophers is confronting these issues, but translating findings into practice remains difficult.

Aligned with college priorities, the growing adoption of computational methods by other disciplines, along with data science and artificial intelligence, has become a major economic driver and part of a virtuous cycle with core research. Additionally, the educational mission is rapidly evolving due to the need to equip students with skills in emerging technologies and to prepare them to continuously innovate in applying these technologies.

The goal of this meeting is to address the three driving questions above:

• What is the future of colleges of computing?
• What will their missions become?
• What are the paths to achieving these futures?

We will undoubtedly see differences across colleges driven by market and regional factors, as well as likely changes in the research funding landscape.

More details coming soon!