SIGCSE

Welcome to the proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, or SIGCSE 2009. "Engaging Computer Science Education" is the theme of the Symposium this year. The theme reflects our common desire to create computer science education that engages our students and facilitates learning. The theme also implies a need to engage in a discussion about the future of computer science education. In these challenging times, we need to reflect on how we interest students, how we retain students, how we make our students globally competitive, and how we lead students to succeed in the interdisciplinary settings of professional computer scientists.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the two annual SIGCSE awards. Elliot B. Koffman of Temple University will receive the SIGCSE award for Outstanding Contribution to CS Education, and will provide the opening keynote. Michael J. Clancy will accept the SIGCSE Award for Lifetime Service to the CS Education Community. Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer of Microsoft, will give the Friday keynote address on "Rethinking Computing." Gregory Abowd of Georgia Institute of Technology will speak during Saturday's concluding luncheon on "Make IT Matter: How Computing Can Make a Difference."

This year's program features a number of special Birthday Events on Thursday, celebrating the 40th annual SIGCSE conference. The reception on Thursday night will be at Chattanooga's Tennessee Aquarium. The First Timers' Lunch will be on Thursday, featuring a special talk by Mike Clancy. As always, we have a large exhibit hall featuring the latest in instructional materials. With the SIGCSE Doctoral Consortium moving to the ICER workshop, we have instead filled Wednesday with a variety of pre-symposium events including the Roundtable for Department Chairs, NSF-supported work on Studio Learning in Computing Education, an Assessment Roundtable, New Teaching Faculty Roundtable, BlueJ/Greenfoot Day, and events on Data Intensive Scalable Computing, the Future of Robots in Education, Integrating FOSS into the Undergraduate Computing Curriculum, and Managing the Academic Career for Faculty Women at Undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering Institutions (CRA-W). During Friday lunch, the UPE Abacus Award will be presented to Eugene Spafford, with a speech by the awardee. On Saturday, top undergraduate and graduate students will present their work at the ACM SIGCSE Student Research Competition.