The Seidenberg Dean's Diary

I hope by now everyone has heard that Dr Amar Gupta will be joining Pace University in August to serve as the new Dean of the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.  You can read about Dr Gupta here.  Dr Gupta joins us from Arizona State University, where he was the Thomas R. Brown Endowed Professor of Management and Technology.  He was also the director of Nexus of Entrepreneurship and Technology Initiative (NEXT).

This is an exciting time technology in New York, and particularly for our School and our University.  Next year the Seidenberg School celebrates its 30th birthday.  I can’t know what the next 30 years will bring, but I can be sure that we are headed in a new direction.

I have been pleased and privileged to serve as the Interim Dean of this fine School for the past four years; I look forward to a sabbatical in the fall and a return to the classroom in spring 2013.  This will be my last post here-please join me on my other blog where I muse about being a professor.

We all have a lot to be grateful for (I know I do!).  And it’s wonderful that the calendar provides us with an opportunity to do so.

Enjoy the holiday, with (or without) the turkey.  Being a vegetarian, I’m looking forward to a polenta bean dish but that’s just me.

Safe traveling to all of us who are traveling, and enjoy the break in the routine.

What a busy fall this is turning out to be!  In this issue you can read about those to whom we are saying “hello” and those to whom we are saying “goodbye.”

We are saying “hello” to our first Tech Mentor-in-Residence, alum Matt Knell, class of 2000, and director of social media at AOL.com.  Matt has been involved in social media for most of his career, which began even before he graduated from Pace University!

And we are saying “hello” to our new class of Seidenberg Scholars.

We are saying “goodbye” to Professor Joseph Bergin who has retired.   Professor Bergin has some thoughts about his 39 years of teaching, including 22 years at Pace University.   You can read his reflections here.  We’re  not letting him get too far away, though.  Dr Bergin will continue to be involved in our Doctor of Professional Studies (DPS) program.

We have updated some of our curricula and expanded our reach, enrolling students in India who work for IBM in Bangalore.

We are very proud of Marius Agica, a senior majoring in both computer science and economics, whose performance playing competitive contract bridge for his home country, Romania,  earned him a mention in the New York Times’ bridge column on September 7.

Enjoy this issue, and let us know what you’d like to see covered in future issues of Refresh.

I’m writing this post from Portland, Oregon where I’m attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  This event, named for Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, brings technical women together from all over the world.  This is my second time at this event and I know it won’t be the last.

Yesterday we heard Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg give an inspiring speech in which she reminded all of us (as if we need reminding) that tech jobs are where the growth is, and Cameron Wilson, ACM’s director of public policy, has been working to educate members of Congress who make funding decisions that “computing is fundamental.”  Here’s a link to a YouTube video of Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk last year in which she talks about why we have too few women leaders, and here’s a link to ACM’s public policy page where you can learn what the ACM does on a wide range of computing issues like accessibility, innovation and education.

And here’s a link to a story on this morning’s NPR radio show “Morning Edition” that includes a slide show of important women in computing, including Anita Borg, who died much too young, and whose eponymous institute hosts the celebration.

Being here has made me think about students and conferences.  There are a few “major” conferences for those of us in information systems/information technology - ICIS, the International Conference on Information Systems, AMCIS, the Americas Conference on Information Systems, and ISECON, the Information Systems Educators Conference.

The conferences in computer science are much more specific.  The ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery-not a great name but we members can’t agree on a better one-long story) hosts a number of conferences with an “alphabet soup” of names-you can see a list here.  These conferences have names like ISCA, International Symposium on Computer Architecture, and HotNets-X, the tenth annual conference on Hot Topics in Networks.

Some of the ACM Special Interest Groups (SIGs) host conferences.  For example, ACM SIGBioinformatics hosts a conference.

And then there are tech meet ups, like the NYTech Meetup, which we’ve had the pleasure of hosting a few times.

Okay, so here’s the punchline:  students, if we could find the funding, would you want to go to conferences?

Please post comments here telling me:

1. What kind of conference you would want to go to (a  big ICIS-type or a smaller ACM SIG type) and on what topic(s)
2. Why you would want to go (what you think you would get out of it) and
3. What you would do with the knowledge you gained from the experience (make a presentation to a class/club or others, write a paper, whatever).

Your comments will help me put together a proposal for funding such experiences.

Faculty, will you comment on conferences that are particularly good for students to attend?  What conferences encourage faculty-student papers?

Thanks everyone!  I fly home tomorrow and will be at the New York city open house on Sunday-see some of you there.

Hope everyone’s semester is going well, and if Thanksgiving is in a few weeks, you know what that means-it’s almost finals!

We hope you are enjoying our redesigned newsletter Refresh.  Thanks to those of you who either posted comments or spoke to us directly.

The big news is the graduation of our first Seidenberg Scholars.  While it may seem that we were just welcoming them as first year students, we have seen them mature, learn and contribute in so many ways to the School.  We will miss them but the bonds of our community are strong, and we know that they will keep in touch.

Our thanks to our friends at ADP, and particularly Gary Butler, CEO and President, for a very successful Leadership and Service in Technology event.  Those of us who were able to attend had a wonderful time reconnecting with old friends and making new ones.  And thanks to our friends at IBM for bringing Watson! to PriceWaterhouseCoopers for the evening.

Our students continue to excel; don’t miss the stories about Vinnie Monaco and Marc Kowtko.  Our faculty have been getting press coverage, as you’ll learn when you read the articles about Jean Coppola, Darren Hayes and Chuck Tappert.

The Seidenberg Institute for Computing Innovation, led by Lixin Tao, provided an opportunity for faculty and colleagues at other institutions to share their knowledge and hone their technical skills.

As we gear up for the next academic year, know that we look forward to hearing from you.  Anything you’d like to see in Refresh?  Let us know.

And finally, congratulations to Linda Kurtz (DPS ’10), the winner of the $75 American Express gift card.