Then and Now in Computer Science Education--the role of CCSC

William Mitchell

CCSC Conference Coordinator

[this script is accompanied by of PowerPoint slides:

• Background of summer MS program at Evansville (30MB)
• Formation of the CCSC and the Journal (19MB)
• Details of the first 20 years of the Southeastern Conference (21MB)
• Expansion of Regions and formation of MidSouth(3.25MB)

I began teaching computing at Anderson College in Indiana in 1974 when DEC and HP mini-computers were making it feasible for small colleges to offer computing majors (AC was featured in HP advertising).   Curriculum 68 had been published by ACM so there was a model of what topic such a major should include.  Unfortunately, there were not many textbooks and few faculty with computing degrees, so there was not much guidance on how to teach computing.    There were, however, three flavors: Computer Science (math), Information Systems (business) and Computer Engineering.    Computer Engineering was found almost exclusively in universities.    There was a great deal of computer programming instruction available at the two-year and community colleges.  

I had grown up around computers and computer applications and wrote my first program while in high school because my father worked for Univac (as chief programmer after earning a PhD from Harvard while helping build the Mark II).    I majored in mathematic at Maryville College, which did not have a computer in the mid-1960s, but I worked two summers as a machine-level programmer for Collins Radio.   I returned to FORTRAN programming in graduate school where I could take non-credit short courses and get computer time, and learned to use cards and later a teletype terminal with paper tape (at Collins my code sheets were key-punched for me).   When teaching at Dana College in 1972 I taught myself to program an Olivetti electronic calculator (a 140 pound desktop) with magnetic cards.   I did a computer science minor at Vanderbilt as part of my mathematics doctorate and took courses at Nashville Tech on an IBM 360-30.   I used a PDP-11 to do all the tabulations and statistics for my dissertation.   When I began to teach computing I had sampled many curricula, many computing environments, and many educational and professional settings.   I had learned data structures from Donald Knuth’s Art of Computer Programming, Compilers from David Gries’ text, and had heard many computer pioneers talk about their work (my father, Grace Hopper, and a young Peter Denning among them).   In 1977, while teaching computing in the Math department at Ball State University,  I attended my first SIGCSE Symposium, which happened to be focused on computing in community colleges.   The next year I moved to the University of Evansville to set up a new computer science program in the College of Engineering along side a computing engineering program.

That was then, and I have been asked to reflect upon the subsequent thirty years with particular focus on how we have arrived at the 20^th Southeastern Computing Conference.   Today computing is ubiquitous, there are many flavors, many different aspects to the technology, and there is a computational aspect to every discipline.   The proliferation of computing makes the job of computer education much more difficult because no matter how your undergraduate computing major is structured, it deals with a minority of the technology topics that students have encountered and hear about.  

I have organized my remarks as follows:   (A) my background (above), (B) the growing pains of computer education in small colleges motivating the creation of the Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges,  (C) the development of regions and the Journal,  (D) my perspective on the current role of CCSC in computing education, and (E) musings on possible futures (to be determined by your vision of computing education).

The growing pains of computer education in small colleges motivating the creation of the Consortium for Computing in Small Colleges (CCSC).

I began attending the annual SIGCSE Symposium  in 1976 and while the that year the focus was on the community college, in the following years the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions seemed to include a lot of faculty from small colleges looking for help in teaching computing.   However, SIGCSE was also being asked to assist international programs, and at the end of the 1970’s it  decided to make that a priority.   

I joined the University of Evansville in 1977  to start a computing program in the School of Engineering.   Once we were underway (I presented the curriculum that I designed at a SIGCSE conference in August 1978) I decided that the University of Evansville could help the situation, so I started the Small College Institute in Data Processing in the summer of 1980 with help from DPMA, the Lilly Foundation, and Prentice Hall (free texts).    This was motivated specifically by two events:  In March of 1980 I had presented a paper that I wrote the previous summer on the challenge facing computer educators in the coming decade because of the great student demand and the short supply of instructors.  In the same session was a paper about the University of South Carolina’s NSF sponsored summer institute for small college faculty whose coursework was accepted into their MS program.  At the end of the session Bill Marion of Valparaiso University  challenged me to do something about the situation I described.   Secondly, when I moved to Evansville, I was a long way from any other computer scientist, so I joined the local DPMA chapter and had become the chapter chair in January of 1980.  

After the first week-long institute, I realized that one week was not enough, so I developed the concept of a two-summer graduate degree program and got approval so that we were able to recruit the first class for the summer of 1982 (while we continued to offer multiple sessions of the one-week institute).   The degree required 34 semester hours (it began as 50 quarter hours) of coursework, 12 each 10-week summer term, 8 transferred from another Masters degree, and two hours of Practicum during the intervening year.   I visited each student at their home institution during the practicum (we ran a co-op program in the Engineering School, so it was common to visit students on-site).  

The requirement of the practicum was to teach computing and write about the experience.  The syllabus said the papers must be of “publishable quality” and the students read several dozen computer education papers in the required curriculum course the first summer, so they knew the kinds of papers that appeared in the SIGCSE Bulletin and Interface, the Computer Education Quarterly for which I was a corner editor beginning in 1982.   Later I added articles from the EDSIG newsletter (I helped start EDSIG in 1983).   The students had the choice of submitting their papers to a journal or to me to determine if they were publishable.  Richard Stegner wrote about his first summer experience at Evansville and had it published in Interface before the second summer and Frank Bennett did the same the second year of the program, and we featured both papers in our brochure.   However, I was reviewing most of the papers and wishing that there were more outlets to a wider audience.  

In the summer of 1983 I presented a paper at the National Computer Education Conference in Baltimore and I saw that there was a panel sponsored by the Alfred Sloan foundation which had sponsored and conference in April of 1982 to consider faculty retraining in conjunction with the ACM and the MAA (Focus Nov-Dec 1982) [This resulted in the formation of the retraining program for Mathematics faculty at Clarkson University in 1983].   I asked to meet with the Sloan project officer in Baltimore and he agreed.  We talked about how the Foundation could support the Evansville efforts, and he said that they liked to support conferences so that the principals could reach decisions.   I told him that I would propose a conference next summer at NECC’83 for small college computing faculty and he said that they would be interested in sponsoring it.   Since A S C U E was a member of NECC and I knew their President, Waldo Roth of Taylor University, I asked their help in interfacing with NECC, and I recruited some participants from the past summer programs to participate.  

At the end of the day we had a plenary session where I asked what should be done next, and I asked if we needed an organization to do it.   I then returned to Evansville and consulted my lawyer friend about setting up a non-profit organization in Indiana.   EDSIG was a similar organization formed two years before and I had their bylaws, which I used as a model.   I asked Wally Roth and Christine Shannon to join me as the Board of Incorporation.   Non-profit status was awarded in the Fall of 1985 and the first issue of the Journal of Computing in Small Colleges was mimeographed and distributed to over 200 faculty at the end of October.   It contained 32 pages and five papers, two from MSCSE student papers.  

A membership meeting was announced for SIGCSE in Cincinnati in February 1986 where the first Board of Directors was nominated and the 8 elected by mail joined the three incorporators  in Louisville that April (the minutes of  all the Board meetings have been published in the Journal).   The second issue of the Journal published three MSCSE student papers in its 36 pages, and the third issue published two more MSCSE students along with three DPMA curriculum reports and my explanation of them (funded by DPMA).   Five issues were planned for the second year with announced topics and different board members as guest editors. 

In October of 1985 the First Annual Eastern Small College Computing Conference was presented at the University of Scranton, the idea of Jack Beidler.   Both Jack and I had attended the Small College Symposium in the upper Midwest, and he decided to emulate it.   Jack and John Meinke co-chaired the conference which had on its Steering Committee Doris Appleby, soon to be one of the initial CCSC Board members, and Robert Riser of ETSU.    John edited the 288 page proceedings  containing nearly 50 refereed papers.   In October of 1986 the second Eastern conference was again hosted by the University of Scranton and I attended.   John Meinke was again the conference co-chair and editor of the 290 page proceedings.   I asked Jack if he could give me some advice about producing such a conference in the Southeast.  

With the Board’s permission I determined that Chattanooga was a central location for a Southeastern conference so I announced that there would be one in December in the May Journal issue.  I found out that there was a Center of Excellence for Computer Applications at UT-Chattanooga.   I contacted the Choo-Choo and arranged for space and lodging, and Dr. Richard Gray and asked him to be the banquet speaker and his assistance in recruiting presenters.   In the September Journal issue the conference was outline with a track of tutorials identified (I had already recruited the presenters) and two tracks of papers.   The call for papers was mailed September 1 with abstracts (two pages) due to me by October 1.  Notification of acceptance was promised October 15 with full text returned by November 10.    As it turned out, UT-Chattanooga suggested a couple of panels, so I recruited three more panels from the Board and MSCSE students and we had only one paper track.   Of the 31 presentations, only 9 were contributed by SE faculty responding to the call for papers and of the 34 institutions represented on the program, 12 were outside the SE.  At the end of the banquet address I took my folder of submitted papers and panel descriptions and asked Lynn Veach Sadler if she would produce a proceedings that we would issue as an issue of the Journal.   Methodist College published the proceedings in March , giving the copyright to the Southeaster Small College Computing Conference (I had promised the presenters a bound proceedings before the conference).

The call for papers for the second conference was published in the March issue of the Journal announcing the conference at UT-Chattanooga on November 18 and 19, 1988.   Abstracts were due May 10, full text September 1 after June 1 notification of acceptance.   Methodist College again produced the proceedings, this time for the conference.  My committee did all the work and I was just asked to fill in the gaps (recruiting panels and tutorials).   Although the host, UT-C had only one presentation of the 27.   I was the only attendee from UE and was responsible for recruiting 5 presentations, and MSCSE students presented six papers and three participated on my panels.  Only 5 of the 25 institutions on the program were outside the SE.   At the end of the conference I passed my Toshiba laptop around the room collecting contact information for the third conference, and then, according to Susan Dean, I approached Susan and George Crocker as they were gathering their stuff to head home and asked them to host the third conference at Stamford.  

The third SESCCC was announced for Birmingham in the March issue of the Journal but a separate brochure was distributed as a call for papers.   Chairman Dick Hull scheduled a conference committee meeting at 5:30, February 22, following the annual CCSC meeting in Louisville.  Methodist College published the Proceedings.  In September 1988 John Meinke took over as the Editor of the Journal.  In its fourth year it published two newsletters out of the University of Evansville and distributed the Eastern, Southeastern, and the 22^nd Small College Symposium proceedings (which was prohibitively expensive to mail).   The next year John took over publishing the Journal and the proceedings.  I became the back issue repository.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE SOUTHEAST IN THE PAST TWENTY YEARS?

The development of regions and the Journal

The Journal now consisted of two conference proceedings and three “newsletters” that contained communications to the members from the Board and three or four contributed papers.   The MSCSE program closed down in 1989 and I moved to LSU-Shreveport.   Barbara Owens had moved from Mercy College to Austin, Texas, while serving on the CCSC Board.   She asked why we couldn’t have a conference in Texas.   She agreed to host it at St. Edwards University and she recruited a steering committee, we published a call for papers and the committee refereed them and produced the first SouthCentral SCCC on March 30 and 31, 1990.   It was published as Journal issue 5.5.    Of the 21 presentations, 4 came from LSU-Shreveport and 4 from St. Edwards, but there was also a paper from Chuck Howerton of Metropolitan State in Denver and two from Ronald Bake of the University of Washington (there was also a paper from Christopher Newport College in Virginia and one from Mount Mercy College in New York).

The second SCSCCC was also at St. Edwards Barbara as chair.  LSU-Shreveport had five presentations, but there were also 4 from Missouri, William Winter from Mary Baldwin College presented a paper, and Chuck Howerton was back.   Ingrid Russell from the University of Hartford presented a paper.

Chuck Howerton asked if we could start a conference in Denver, so he got together some faculty from Metropolitan University and Peter Isaacson and Terry Scott from Northern Colorado, who presented at the 4^th SECSCC and at Eastern SCCC, and we held the first Rocky Mountain SCCC on October 16 and 17 of 1992.   

I than began to plant conferences instead of wait for them to come to me.   I contacted the schools in Indiana and Michigan and held an organizing meeting in a restaurant in Ft. Wayne.  The First Midwest SCCC was held September 30 and October 1 of 1994.  in a Ramada Inn in Ft. Wayne.  The Missouri schools had been faithfully attending SCSCCC, but I helped them start the Central Plains Conference on March 31 and April 1 the following year.  

Ingrid Russell came back to SCSCCC and so I asked if she would like to spawn a conference in the Northeast.   The Eastern folks were not happy, about that prospect, but with our growth we did not need their proceedings for the Journal and we said that either they agreed to join us as a region or go their own way.   The First Northeastern SCCC was held April 19 and 20, 1996 at the University of Hartford, and immediately became our largest conference.   We now had six conferences and John had begun pairing them in combined issues.

Rob Bryant from Gonzaga University regularly attended the Consortium Annual Meeting and he came a couple of time to Rocky Mountain.   I then approached him about setting up a Northwest conference.   With the help of Chuck Howerton, Northwest held its first conference Oct 9 and 10, 1999 (and its proceedings was paired with SESCCC).  

In 2000 I moved to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and I once again attempted to plant a new conference in Memphis.   I came to the SESCCC conference here at Lipscomb and sought out the folks from Memphis to ascertain interest.   I then contacted the schools north and south of Memphis along the Mississippi and those in Arkansas and northern Louisiana and was able to gather a steering committee at Christian Brothers College (Dan Brandon has presented several times at SESCCC).   We held the first MidSouth conference at Rhodes College on March 28 and 29, 2003.    

The Board was not happy that I had initiated the conference despite the provision of the Bylaws giving me permission to do so.   The SouthCentral folks were most upset because the Mississippi and Louisiana schools had been supporting them.   Arkansas and western Tennessee had been attending SESCCC when it came west every three or four years.   The Board said that they would sponsor the conference once, but sent Bill Myers to tell the Steering Committee that the Consoritum needed to back off and establish a growth policy.   Too much work was being placed on the Journal Editor, the Membership Chair, and the Treasurer with all of conferences.  

Since the MidSouth steering committee had just produced a very satisfying conference, they decided to continue on their own.   I hosted the second conference at UALR in 2004 and incorporated the conference as a non-profit in Arkansas.  George Benjamin edited our proceedings and it was printed by Montrose and entered into the ACM Digital Library.   The third conference was planned for the University of Mississippi in 2005.   That fall the Board decided to accept the conference and it became the 9^th region of the Consortium (Eastern decided to join CCSC in 2001). 

This year the Board has authorized me to start a Spring conference in Southern California.   I have served on the board continuously for 20 years, attending every Board meeting, but I have been non-voting since 1993 as Conference Coordinator (except when I represent a new conference that has not yet elected a representative).   

My perspective on the current role of CCSC in computing education

I believe that CCSC has proved its worth.   I invited the Small College Symposium to enter talks about joining with us, but they are content to go their own way.   There are several other regional computing conferences that continue to serve a geographical niche.   We have formed an interlocking directorate with SIGCSE and for several years there have been CCSC members on their Board (Barbara Owens is currently vice-President).   SIGCSE is happy with their decision nearly twenty-five years ago to go international, and we complement their national and international conferences with regional conferences that are all held “in cooperation with SIGCSE.”  We are happy to be in the ACM Digital Library, and have made all of our proceedings public so anyone can access the full text.   There are still regions of the country which are on the fringe of a CCSC region, so I think there is room to add more conferences if we can find the resources to support them.    The Board is seriously considering distributing the Journal on CD and have only printed proceedings at the conferences (if that).   All we need for the Digital Library is .pdf copies of our papers.   We have pushed registration and proceedings compilation down to the regions, reducing the burden on the Board and we have recently reorganized to make our heaviest workloads appointed rather than elected.  We are therefore streamlining and increasing our capacity for growth.   Southern California has express great interest.   A Northern California conference is a possibility, as is an Ohio region.   It is not getting any easier to teach computing, so the need for collaboration is increasing. 

Musings on possible futures (to be determined by your vision of computing education

I have been involved in creating a high tech college in Arkansas and have written about different flavors of undergraduate computing.   The problem with diversity is lack of assessment and accountability.   I am in favor of professional accreditation and especially the reasonably way ABET is approaching the problem.   They focus on making each program show that their requirements are sufficient and effective with respect to achieving a stated goal.

Small programs have more choices but must work harder to present coherent curricula that instill a long-term worldview.  They must not simply select topics of interest to faculty and define a major or minor that is “distinctive” and “unique to this institution.”  Now that computing encompasses security and networking and visualization (a term that has recently shown up in titles of presentations at this conference) and software engineering and ecommerce as well as hardware, parallelism, algorithms and applications, it is not appropriate to create a mix and match curriculum.  Curricula should be tied to standard models that have face-validity by engendering a collection of skills that are recognized as useful for solving problems in today’s environment and the foreseeable future.

I believe that because of the proliferation of computing topics, we are soon to be facing another faculty crisis, this time one of competence because of the difficulty everyone has in staying current.   If you just learn from textbooks, you will find a new addition suddenly will be quite different from the old (the object paradigm change will continue to occur).   There will be a temptation to try to be all things to all students in terms of providing preparation on a wide span of interesting topics, and our faculty will not be equal to the task.   We will see lots of low-level, disconnected elective courses that do not reveal the deep issues of the topic but survey the current layer of technology that services that topic.