This CISE Special Project award provides funding to the Association for Computing Machinery for the organization of a high-level summit to bring together the main computing societies in the United States to address the future of undergraduate computing education on a national scale. The ACM Education Board is to lead the activity. The meeting will focus on the collaborative efforts to revitalize undergraduate computing education. Underlying this meeting is the current perception of a crisis in undergraduate computing education with decreasing enrollments, adherence to outdated traditional models for undergraduate education and a need to foster innovation across computing education to provide exciting educational pathways for the computing professionals of the future. Through collaboration and discussion with leaders of the professional societies the group plans to develop a shared understanding of the main issues, identify key steps to address the current situation, and develop agreement about responsibilities for a range of actions leading to a substantial transformation and revitalization of undergraduate computing education.
The intellectual merit lies in the efforts to address the major issues impacting undergraduate computing education on a national scale. The participating groups, the ACM Education Board and the other participating professional organizations, represents a powerful alliance informed by experience as computing professionals and service in professional organizations as representatives of the computing education community uniquely qualified to undertake a project of this scope and to implement a national vision for transformation of computing education in the United States. Through these activities, the computing community should develop promote a better understanding of computing, promote relevant research, support excellence in computing education, and emphasize the range of opportunities available in computing to the national as a whole.
The broader impacts lie in the potential to set the stage for a comprehensive national strategic agenda for improving computing education across the nation. Developing shared national goals and strategies among the major computing organizations can impact the potential and opportunities for all citizens and thus address the national need for a diverse group of computing professionals for the future.
