Forum for Academic Software Engineering Volume 5, Number 19, Thu Aug 24 11:53:32 CDT 1995 Topics: IS'95 Curriculum -- Request for Reviewers Letter from TCSEE Chair A------------------------------------------------------- From: BART@wpgateway.cis.usouthal.edu Subject: IS'95 Curriculum -- Request for Reviewers A new curriculum for IS is now available for review. IS'95 is a cooperative process of the DPMA, ACM, AIS and receives cooperative support from SEI, ICIS, IAIM, IACIS, TIMS-INFORMS. Many of the people who have been responsible for the development of IS are involved in the process including Longenecker, Feinstein, Gordon Davis, Dan Couger, Jay Nunamaker, Robert Ashenhurst, Milton Jenkins, John Gorgone, and many others. In creating IS'95 we have tried to develop a body of knowledge from the IS, CS and CE literature. We have noticed considerable overlaps, and are now developing several manuscripts which will review this observation. However, the point has always been made that different levels and types of coverage are given within the different computing disciplines. Quite honestly, we are still not so sure. The ACM Ed Board would like us to test the different groups to determine the issue. We have developed a questionaire that is part of the IS'95 review package to look at this point, and have made available a copy of the IS'95 document (which contains the body of knowledge) to anyone who would complete the questionaire and review the IS'95 manuscript. We are hoping to complete this review within the next month. Gary has been very helpful at finding several possible reviewers, and suggested that your might be interested in seeing these questions addressed as well. I would be most appreciative of your assistance, and will be happy to acknowledge your participation in the final IS'95 document. I can make available as many as 50 copies of the document for this review. Thanks, Bart Longenecker Any potential reviewers should address a request to me via email bart@cis.usouthal.edu or fax (334) 460-7274 or Land Mail Dr. Herbert E. Longenecker, Jr. IS'95 Review Process c/o School of CIS - FCW-20 University of South Alabama Mobile, Alabama 36688 (334) 460-9710 voice mail/pager A------------------------------------------------------- From: Keith Pierce Subject: Letter from TCSEE Chair [ED: This is the lead article for the Education News column of the fall issue of the TCSE Newsletter. Since that newsletter has not published in a timely fashion (spring's issue isn't out yet) I will distribute in the next few issues of FASE the articles to appear in the fall issue. Laurie Werth is the chair of the Technical Committee on Software Engineering Education, a subcommittee of the IEEE-CS Technical Council on Software Engineering Education. She reports on recent and planned activities of the subcommittee.] Letter from the Chair Laurie Werth The University of Texas at Austin Two years ago, recognizing the increasing importance of software engineering education, the TCSE created the Education Subcommittee and appointed its steering committee. Its purpose was to identify, promote, develop and support the formal and informal education of software engineering practitioners, students and educators. The Subcommittee will seek the cooperation of national and inter- national organizations that are committed to improving the quality of software engineering education. The TCSE is now a technical council, and we have now become the Education Technical Committee and have added many new activities. The formation of the new Joint Task Force for the Establishment of Software Engineering as a Profession (SEP), combined with the rapid increase in the importance of software engineering education in both the academic and industrial sectors, will mean that the Education TC will have an opportunity to play a larger role in the IEEE organization and in national and international software edu- cation efforts. We are particularly interested in having a broader representation of members in this newsletter. We encourage you to submit arti- cles, calls for papers, trip reports from conferences, short news reports, education efforts and initiatives. We would like to high- light one or more software engineering programs each issue. Please send our editor Keith descriptions of your school or organiza- tion's innovative academic or industry classes and programs. Since there is so much going on around the world, we would particularly like to encourage more international news. Anyone interested in software engineering education is invited to become a member -- just fill out the application at the back of this newsletter (and check the box to indicate your interest in the Education Committee) or email the same information to tcse@computer.org. Some of our current activities and future plans are described be- low. If you want to become involved, contact the person or organi- zation included in the article or contact me. Education Workshops and Conferences International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). In 1994 at Sorrento, Anthony Finklestein organized a well-attended Software Engineering Education Workshop. In 1995 at Seattle John Jenkins hosted a workshop on Graduate Software Engineering pro- grams. Copies of position papers are available from John at J.O.Jenkins@city.ac.uk. Jochen Ludewig, Universitat Stuttgart, is organizing the next education workshop in 1996 at Berlin. Frontiers in Education (FIE). For the first time, there will be several software engineering education events at this general engineering education conference in Atlanta this November. Laurie Werth, Gary Ford and others have been asked to prepare a panel on the current status of Software Engineering education. We plan to have speakers from several of the newer programs at the under- graduate, graduate and continuing education level. There will be at least one paper session on software engineering education as well. The program should be both interesting and informative to our members and others in the software engineering community. Conference on Software Engineering Education (CSEE). The 9th conference will be in Daytona Beach, Florida, in April. This meeting comprises a healthy mix of industry and academic software engineering educators. In addition to papers, panels and reports, there are outstanding tutorials offered at very low cost. There are always a number of interesting birds-of-a-feather sessions. We will hold a meeting of the Education Committee at CSEE. Since our committee now partially sponsors CSEE, we are particu- larly interested in hearing about additional activities our mem- bers would like to see at this important meeting. We are consider- ing broadening the program to include activities such as: Software Engineering Educator of the Year Award and a Software Engineering Student Contest. Other ideas for new activities are encouraged and should be sent to lwerth@cs.utexas.edu or kpierce@d.umn.edu. Other good places to see and talk with others involved in soft- ware engineering education are at the ACM SIGCSE meeting in Phila- delphia, PA, Feb. 15-16, 1996, and OOPSLA this October. IEEE-CS/ACM Joint Steering Committee for the Establishment of Software Engineering as a Profession (SEP) This committee came into existence in early 1994 after earlier ef- forts of a IEEE-CS committee. It oversees three task forces with the following missions: identify the body of knowledge and recom- mended practices, develop a code of ethics and professional prac- tice, and develop relevant software engineering curricula. The overall plan is to first identify the body of knowledge and code of ethics, and then develop curricula from that. The committee met in Nashville at ACM Computing Week in February. The Body-of-Knowledge task force is developing a survey to be dis- tributed widely in industry and then analyzed. It has turned out to be a very significant undertaking and at this point is running behind the earlier optimistic schedule. The Education Task Force has not yet been formally constituted, but the co-chairs John Werth and Doris Carver have attended all meetings of the Steering Committee. Dennis Frailey of TI and Gary Ford of SEI held pilot training meetings in Dallas and Austin for developing survey material for the Body of Knowledge. The curriculum subcommittee has begun preparations for a survey of existing software engineering courses and programs at both the graduate and undergraduate level. The Ethics and Professional Practices Task Force, formed earlier in the year, will document and codify standards of ethical and professional practices for software engineering. These standards shall document international consensus for minimally acceptable principles for identifying and resolving ethical conflicts in the discipline. The task force will consider: responsibilities of the software engineer to peers, lay persons, employer, customers, the profession, society and humanity; and, similarly, responsibilities of these various entities toward the software engineer. Working groups of the Ethics task force have been formed to ad- dress specific areas of concern. The current working groups and their chairs are: Institutional Support (Michael McFarland, mcfarland@bcuxs2.bc.edu), Intellectual Property (Suzanne Weisband, sweisband@bpa.arizona.edu), Professional Competence (Donald Got- terbarn, d.gotterbarn@computer.org), Professional Relationships (Joyce Currie Little, jclittle@toe.towson.edu), Privacy (Patrick Sullivan, psullivan@brook.edu), Reliability and Safety (Keith Miller, miller@eagle.sangamon.edu), Security and Social Justice (Suzanne Weisband, sweisband@bpa.arizona.edu). Don Gotterbarn held a workshop at NECC this summer to begin to develop materials for integrating ethics into a variety of com- puter science courses. Publications News The cyber-newsletter Forum for Academic Software Engineering (FASE) continues to expand. We had nine issues in 1993, 21 issues in 1994 and anticipate 30 issues in 1995. We have over 600 current subscribers. Issues are more extensive and more frequent, but more participation from subscribers is needed. International members find it particularly valuable due to its rapid delivery. FASE now has a WWW page and is archiving newsletters courtesy of David Eichmann at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. Education News (this column). Keith Pierce was appointed editor and has done an excellent job in preparing its first three issues. He has been a valuable addition to the Steering Committee as well. Jorge Diaz-Herrera and others continued the effort to establish a Journal of Software Engineering Education. Due to economic pressures, there is reluctance in the professional societies to start a new journal. Two alternative proposals are being consid- ered: Issuing a monograph - which is far less expensive and will give us a chance to pilot an education publication, or; publishing an electronic journal or magazine. Keith Pierce is investigating this second option. Laurie Werth is developing a WWW home-page of resources for all levels of computing education. Relevant software engineering, com- puter science, information systems, computer ethics and profes- sional practices and K-12 resources exist and will be expanded, as time permits. Information will include Internet education re- sources at the Software Engineering Institute, pertinent military and government Web pages, as well as curriculum and other educa- tion programs offered by other professional organizations such as ACM and DPMA. For example, new curricula have recently been devel- oped by OOPSLA in Object Oriented Programming and by SIGCHI (Computer Human Interface). The information systems community has recently produced a new, broader curriculum recommendation which will be of interest to many of our members as well. The Web page will include links to free source code, tutorial material and courseware, and to information on world-wide professional organi- zations and university program. We are currently pilot testing our education Web page which will be available from the IEEE home page: http://computer.org. If you know of other web pages that will be of particular interest to members of the Education committee, send them to lwerth@cs.utexas.edu. We are especially looking for pointers to software engineering academic programs. E------------------------------------------------------------------- FASE Volume 5 Number 19 Send newsletter articles to fase-submit@d.umn.edu or fase@d.umn.edu Send requests to add, delete, or modify a subscription to fase-request@d.umn.edu Send problem reports, returned mail, or other correspondence about this newsletter to fase-owner@d.umn.edu or kpierce@d.umn.edu You can retrieve back issues by anonymous FTP from from ricis.cl.uh.edu. You can access them through WWW at URL http://ricis.cl.uh.edu/FASE/ Keith Pierce, Editor Laurie Werth, Advisory Committee Department of Computer Science Dept. of Computer Science University of Minnesota, Duluth Taylor Hall 2.124 Duluth, MN 55812-2496 University of Texas at Austin Telephone: (218) 726-7194 Austin, Texas 78712 Fax: (218) 726-6360 Telephone: (512) 471-9535 Email: kpierce@d.umn.edu Fax: (512)471-8885 Email: lwerth@cs.utexas.edu David Eichmann, FASE Archivist Asst. Prof. / RBSE Director of R & D Web: http://ricis.cl.uh.edu/eichmann/ Software Engineering Program Phone: (713) 283-3875 University of Houston - Clear Lake fax: (713) 283-3810 Box 113, 2700 Bay Area Blvd. Email: eichmann@rbse.jsc.nasa.gov Houston, TX 77058 or: eichmann@cl.uh.edu RBSE on the Web: http://rbse.jsc.nasa.gov/eichmann/rbse.html