The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued the following Dear Colleague Letter calling for proposals that will advance STEM learning and explore solutions to global challenges. Dear Colleague: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is the place where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and discoverers begin. Nationally and internationally, cities and communities face deeply interlocking physical, social, behavioral, economic, and infrastructural challenges. For example, we face complex challenges in providing sufficient food, clean water, and energy for all, while sustaining a healthy environment. Solutions will require ingenuity and expertise from across all domains, including the sciences. Learners can be Change Makers, identifying and working to solve problems that matter […]

The White House recently released their list of 100 examples of President Obama’s leadership in science, technology, and innovation. The list includes many computing related commitments such as supported millions of students with ConnectEd, created a new pipeline for well-paying tech jobs, and called for computer science education for all. The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has contributed to many of these examples. #34 is the National Robotics Initiative (NRI). In June 2011, the Administration established the National Robotics Initiative to spur research and development in a variety of robotics applications, including healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, space exploration, and national security. The CCC’s 2008 Robotics Roadmap was a key catalyst for the NRI and […]

Contributions to this post were provided by Andrew Ko, University of Washington. Andrew J. Ko is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington Information School and an Adjunct Associate Professor in Computer Science and Engineering. His research focuses on interactions between people and code, spanning the areas of human-computer interaction, software engineering, and more recently computing education. Ko maintains a blog called Bits and Behavior in which he muses “about software and the world’s attempt to understand it.” A recent blog post, however, was a little more personal and talked about his transition from studying developer tools and productivity to “shaping how developers (and developers-in-training) learn and shape their […]

Happy Birthday, Grace Hopper! Computer Science Education Week (CS Ed Week), the annual program designed to engage students of all ages in computer science is here! Each year we recognize CS Ed Week around the birthday of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (December 9, 1906), a pioneer of computing. Last year, President Obama became the first President to write computer code as a part of Hour of Code at the White House and the Administration announced a host of public and private commitments to expand access to computer science education in K-12 schools. This year, to kick-off the week, the White House hosted its first ever CS Tech Jam, bringing together educators, students, and […]

The following is a blog post by Ran Libeskind-Hadas, R. Michael Shanahan Professor and Computer Science Department Chair at Harvey Mudd College, Co-Chair of CRA’s Education subcommittee (CRA-E), and former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council Member and Debra Richardson, founding Dean of the UC Irvine Bren School of Information and Computer Science and CCC Council Member. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week that every public school in New York City- elementary through high school – must offer computer science courses to all students within ten years. It is estimated that fewer than 10% of schools in New York City currently offer a CS course and only 1% of students take such a course. CS will not be required of […]