In Brief - Committee Activities

Awards (Caroline Wardle, Daniel Reed, Jan Cuny)

The committees are evaluating the nominations received for the A. Nico Habermann Award and the Distinguished Service Award, and will present a slate of recommended candidates for the CRA board to vote on. Both awards will be presented to those selected at the CRA Conference at Snowbird '98 on July 27. Nominations received for the Undergraduate Awards have been forwarded to the selection committee for their review.

Coalition to Diversify Computing (Sandra Johnson Baylor)

The CRA/ACM Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) has a number of projects planned for the remainder of the year. One is to develop a "Minorities in Computer Science" brochure, available in print and on the web, that will feature the successes of 12 to 20 minority students and scientists who have insightful, interesting personal histories. A second project is to continue to develop a CDC website to serve as a repository of information on programs of value to minority researchers. It will also serve as a focal point for CDC activities, and allow the sharing of relevant ideas and resources.

The coalition would like to establish and maintain a CDC database of contacts who have an interest in helping minorities pursue careers in computing. In addition to information on minorities themselves, the database will help build an information infrastructure to be used by CDC to initiate projects, inform people about CDC activities, and build a network of individuals with common goals. The database will be incorporated into the CDC website, and will help to inform those supportive of CDC's goals.

Support will be provided for 10 minority students to participate in the annual professional ADMI meeting in June in Houston, Texas. They will be selected based on their achievements, and will be encouraged to take full advantage of the conference, including making contacts, learning about research and funding opportunities, and possibly presenting the results of their work. CDC also will seek support for seven minority students and/or department heads at minority institutions to attend CRA's Conference at Snowbird.

Elections (David Patterson)

The committee finalized the slate of nominees, and election ballots were sent to members in mid-April. The deadline for receipt of completed ballots in the CRA office is Monday, May 11. Results will be announced in late May.

Electronic Services (Jack Stankovic)

The CRA Webpages have been improved. CRA Conference at Snowbird '98 registration is now available via the web (http://www.cra.org/Activities/snowbird/.) An "idea and comments" icon has been added to the website, and we are soliciting feedback from users of the webpages. Future plans include the installation of statistics-gathering tools and search engines.

Executive Fellowship Program (Randy Katz)

Two applicants were chosen by the selection committee to proceed to the next stage of the selection process. Final decisions will be made based on personal interviews in federal agencies where suitable positions have been identified.

Government Affairs (Peter Freeman)

On March 9, visits were organized for several Board members to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, DARPA, and NSF, and to three congressional offices. On April 21, Peter Freeman testified for CRA at hearings of the House Appropriations Committee on NSF funding (see CRA's statement on the web at www.cra.org.)

"Project LISTEN: A Reading Tutor That Listens," has been selected to represent CRA at the 1998 Exhibition sponsored by the Coalition for National Science Funding (CNSF) on May 20. This is the fourth year that CNSF has put on the exhibition for Members of Congress and their staffs. Project LISTEN, directed by Dr. Jack Mostow, Carnegie Mellon University, is an interdisciplinary research project to develop a novel cure for illiteracy - an automated Reading Tutor that displays stories on a computer screen, and listens to children reading them aloud. Congressional visitors to CRA's exhibit will receive a "hands-on" demonstration of the project.

Membership Committee (Larry Snyder)

In February, the committee contacted the handful of academic departments that had not paid 1997-1998 membership dues encouraging them to join the other association members. Virtually all of the late departments have rejoined, making CRA the representative of nearly all research computing departments in the United States and Canada.

Publications (Jeff Ullman)

We are happy to announce that, in addition to the page images of CRN available from www.cra.org, many recent articles have been converted to HTML and are available in brief and full text. A search by topic is also available from the CRA webpages. Try it!

Snowbird Conference (James Foley and Mary Jane Irwin)

Registration materials for Snowbird '98, July 26-28 in Snowbird, Utah have been mailed out. The cutoff date for reduced registration is June 10, 1998. Additional information and Snowbird program updates are available on the web at www.cra.org/snowbird/. For program updates for the conference see the backpage of CRN.

Surveys (Gregory Andrews)

A new "departmental profiles" survey, seeking information in areas not covered by CRA's Taulbee Survey, was circulated to Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science and computer engineering in mid-April. The survey is available online at www.cra.org/Profiles/FillOut, and electronic completion is preferred. The deadline for submission is May 29, 1998. It is hoped that preliminary results will be available by end of July for the CRA Confernece at Snowbird '98. Final results will appear in the September edition of CRN.

Workshops (David Patterson, Chair, Academic Careers)

The Effective Teaching Workshop will take place Thursday, July 23 and the Academic Careers Workshop Friday, July 24, 1998, both in Madison, Wisconsin. They will be collocated with a major meeting of the AAAI and several other meetings of groups interested in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and related topics (see announcement, this page.)