“A Hop, Skip and Jump” A Personal Journey Down SIGCSE Memory Lane
meetings with colleagues at their offices, etc. We learned that
patience really was a virtue! The one constant was that our colleagues, and people in general, were open and eager to develop
relationships that transcended politics. SIGCSE was/is one such
vehicle to overcome artificial barriers.
We mostly stayed in campsites and
visited as many universities as possible. In
Eastern Europe we were fortunate to visit
colleagues teaching computer science at
universities in Hungary, Rumania, (then)
Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria including
Professors Boyan Penkov in Sofia, and
Michal Chytil in Prague. Subsequently, I
visited both of them giving lectures and
discussing both SIGCSE and mutual research interests. I know that many of you
have had similar experiences (perhaps
without the camping aspect!) and have
not only made numerous international
friends but contacts for your departments and universities. Some
of you have also shared mutual research interests that resulted in
joint papers and collaborative research projects.
SIGCSE BULLETIN
The Bulletin has been the mainstay and lifeline for communicating among our members—particularly in the early days. The
Calendar of Events was our only means for providing members
with the latest information on key dates and places for upcoming events. The Bulletin also included Letters to the Editor, papers on current topics (often courses and curriculum) as well as
observations from the Chair and Editor regarding items/topics
of special interest. When I took over as Editor in 1969 (with Vol.
1 #3) we typed each issue on special mats. I hired undergraduates to do the typing and for four years we typed, edited and
mailed the masters to ACM headquarters. Our ACM liaison
then organized the printing and mailing. Irene Hollister, Bridget Gann and Fred Aaronson were among those at ACM HQ
who were of tremendous assistance in our early days. It normally took 4–6 weeks from when we began typing and putting an
issue together until our members received it. The issues were
usually 20+ pages with several of them approaching 50 pages!
We published three regular issues of the Bulletin per year plus
the Proceedings as a fourth issue. It took numerous hours to
put together an issue since any typing mistakes had to be painstakingly fixed, all graphs, etc. had to be hand drawn and fact
checking was quite time consuming. Moving this process to a
computer-based system was a HUGE plus!
John Impagliazzo was kind enough to send me some memories of when he took over the editing of the Bulletin in 1997.
I quote from a recent note from him. “When I inherited the
SIGCSE Bulletin from Jim Miller, he gave me two boxes of re-
pro paper to mount articles, images, and the like. I figured it
was time to throw out the old and ring in the new. So, I guess
support), in collaboration with the IEEE Computer Society, formed
the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board (CSAB) in 1984.
A key point in making SIGCSE successful was the recognition that the Bulletin and proceedings were its foundation.
They were central in keeping SIGCSE
members informed and up-to-date, as
well as providing a forum for exchanging ideas and publishing CS education
research. With that in mind we also
knew that our biggest cost was producing and mailing the Proceedings of the
Technical Symposium to all the members as part of their dues. Our goal was
to operate on a “break-even” basis yet
continue to include the Proceedings as
one of the four Bulletin issues. (Those
members who attended the symposia
thus received two copies though when
they registered they were given the option of foregoing their second copy.) We were able to maintain
this “balance” though the parameters changed when the
Bulletin went on-line, and Inroads was established.
PROMOTING SIGCSE
As early as the 25th ACM National Conference in September
1970, SIGCSE had an active and visible presence sponsoring
five sessions [ 4].
1. General Education in Computer Science
2. Undergraduate Education in Computer Science
3. Graduate Programs in Computer Science
4. Organizing for Computer Science Education
5. Computer Science Education and Industry – A Dialogue
In addition, several members of SIGCSE participated in the
First International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
World Conference on Computer Education (Amsterdam,
1970) including yours truly. My primary purpose was to pres-
ent a paper describing SIGCSE and to encourage participants
from around the world to join and work with us. As noted in a
Bulletin article [ 5] summarizing papers presented at this con-
ference “SIGCSE is presented by Aiken. He reviews the organi-
zation accomplishments and goals and indicates a desire to see
One of the most rewarding aspects of attending this con-
ference was meeting leading European computer scientists
and learning how they were addressing many of the same is-
sues we were tackling in North America. A later highlight was
a two month trip my wife and I took in the summer of 1973
driving through Eastern Europe, Turkey, Greece and Italy. This
was during the “Cold War”—an era when it was often difficult
to accomplish tasks such as crossing borders, changing money,
getting necessary government approvals for vouchers, arranging
As early as the
25th ACM National
Conference
in September 1970,
SIGCSE had an
active and visible
presence sponsoring
five sessions.