From dkumar at cs.brynmawr.edu Wed Aug 11 10:14:25 2010 From: dkumar at cs.brynmawr.edu (Deepak Kumar) Date: Wed Aug 11 09:40:23 2010 Subject: [Compsci] Fall 2010 Announcements! Message-ID: <4C62B041.9050605@cs.brynmawr.edu> Hello everyone! Hope you all are having a good, productive, relaxing, and fun summer! As the Fall semester is almost upon us I am writing to inform you all of some important announcements that may be of use. 1. Starting July 1, 2010 I have been assigned the Chair of the Computer Science Department. Prof. Blank has served us eminently for the past three years and we are all very thankful to him for the great leadership. 2. This Fall we also welcome Prof. Eric Eaton to the CS faculty. We are thrilled to have Eric become a part of our department and I am sure you all will enjoy taking classes with him. Eric's office will be in Room 249 (next door to Prof. Blank) so when you get back, stop by and say "Hi" to him. This Fall Eric will be teaching CS312 (Computer Graphics) and CS 380 (Recent Advances in Computer Science). The topic for CS380 is going to be "Sustainability & Assistive Computing" Here is a short descrition: CMSC Recent Advances in Computer Science (Topic: Sustainability and Assistive Computing) Description: This course will explore how to use computers and computational methods for positive change, examining both broader impacts on societal development and environmental sustainability, and narrower improvements to individual lives through assistive technologies. We will cover a variety of highly interdisciplinary topics, including computational allocation of natural resources, monitoring societal-environmental interactions and impacts, ecological modeling, green computing, assistive technologies for people with disabilities, telemedicine, and computers in the developing world. Prerequisite: Junior standing or permission of the instructor. All CS students should consider taking both these classes. You all should also encourage your friends in other Majors to consider taking CS380 as well. It is an interdisciplinary course and of great relevance to many. 3. It is also time to start finalizing your course plans. Take a good look at our offerings on the trico course catalog. Any questions, please feel free to send e-mail. 4. This coming year, Prof. Dianna Xu will be on a well deserved sabbatical. This means that we all need to bug her less as she will not be involved in day-to-day curricular activities of the department. Sabbaticals are meant for faculty to spend their time in engaging scholarship. We all wish her a successful sabbatical. 5. Students who intend to declare a Major, Double Major, or a Minor in Computer Science/Computational Methods should contact their faculty advisors soon after arrival and make concrete course plans and do the needed paperwork this Fall. CS students, you all know who the prospective CS majors might be, so pass thi son to them, and encourage them to join this e-mail list! 6. Our glorious Junior Major Student Reps, Alex Funk and Marissa Mocenigo, will now become Senior Major Reps. So we are on the look out for nominations and/or volunteers to be Junior Major Reps. To qualify all you have to be is a declared CS Major with Junior standing (duh!), and bubbling with lots of ideas and enthusiasm for things to plan and do in the coming year. 7. Speaking of things to do in the coming year, we will have some money to sponsor travel for a small number of students to one or more conferences. The Grace Hopper Conference seems to be ever popular but there are others as well. Start thinking about possibilities among yourselves and come and talk to me about your plans and ideas so we can appropriate a sufficient budget. There is of course much much more to share and discuss but this message is already too long so I will stop. Do give it a good read. It will hopefully put you in the Fall frame of mind and start thinking of more things in the same vein. There's still a few more weeks of summer left, so enjoy! Deepak. -- Deepak Kumar Professor of Computer Science Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 dkumar@cs.brynmawr.edu, dkumar@acm.org http://www.cs.brynmawr.edu/~dkumar