Upsilon Pi Epsilon's Half Century

OPINION by Jeffrey L. Popyack, Drexel University UPSILON PI EPSILON

Upsilon Pi Epsilon’s Half Century

1. Promotion of high scholarship Affiliations Greetings! 2. Encouragement of individual UPE is the only national honor society January 10, 2017 contribution for the computing and information marked the 50th 3. Recognition of outstanding talent disciplines and is recognized as such by anniversary of the 4. Provision of an environment for the the Association for Computing Machin- founding of Upsilon growth of Computer Science ery and the IEEE Computer Society. In Pi Epsilon, kicking 5. Effective representation of com- 1997, Upsilon Pi Epsilon was admitted as off what promises puter science in interdisciplinary a member of the Association of College to be a yearlong communications Honor Societies (ACHS)—the parent celebration. We take 6. Maintenance of the standards of our organization for all academic honor soci- this opportunity to introduce UPE to new profession eties in North America, with 67 member readers, and review highlights of the first societies. half century. Our guest co-author is Although founded as a society for Since joining ACHS, UPE is proud to be Orlando Madrigal, who has served UPE in computer science, the forward vision of distinguished as the member society that many capacities, most notably as Interna- the founders is evident in their choices of distributes the largest percentage—by an tional Secretary and Executive Director. Greek letters Upsilon, Pi, and Epsilon for impressive margin—of its revenues back to the name, as they are the first letters of the students in the form of awards. In the most What is Upsilon Pi Epsilon? Greek words for Computer (υπολογιστηʹ), recent year, this amounted to $75,800 in Upsilon Pi Epsilon [5] is an honor society Information (πληροφοριʹες) and Science awards (scholarships, chapter awards, and whose membership consists of outstanding (επιστηʹμη). the Intercollegiate Programming Contest undergraduates and graduate students in Indeed, for a field that has exhibited (ICPC)). the computing and information disciplines. such constant and spectacular change, UPE is a charter member of IFEES It was first organized at Texas A & M Univer- the Society has remained relatively stable (International Federation of Engineering sity, College Station, Texas, by five graduate in its core mission and goals. The most Education Societies). students and a faculty advisor, presaging significant change in the first 50 years such landmarks on the computing land- has been in broadening the guidelines for Recognition of scape [3] as the GOTO Controversy (1968), chapter membership. Originally patterned Outstanding Talent UNIX (1969) and Pascal (1970). Penn State after criteria like those that later formed Arguably UPE’s most successful initiative University became the second chapter in the foundation for accreditation, they were was its role in founding the ACM Interna- 1969, followed by North Carolina State and revised in 2002 to be inclusive of small col- tional Collegiate Programming Contest the University of Southwestern Louisiana leges and liberal arts colleges. Not surpris- [2], which began as a small local contest [4]. UPE now has chapters in 280 colleges ingly, the 2003/04 academic year saw the and has shown periods of exponential and universities in the US and overseas. addition of 20 new chapters, surpassing in growth in its worldwide reach. Another one year one-tenth the number chartered is the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Mission and Goals in the first 36 years. [1], which began with UPE as the Doc- The mission of UPE is to recognize aca- An objective worth mentioning is to toral Forum, before future ACM Fellow demic excellence at both the undergradu- have at least one chapter in every US state Walter M. Carlson assumed leadership. ate and graduate levels in the Computing and as this is written, chapters have been Recognizing outstanding talent, one of and Information Disciplines. The original established in 47 states, excepting only UPE’s goals, is also one of our favorite goals of UPE were [2]: Alaska, Idaho, and Montana. pastimes.

acm Inroads • inroads.acm.org 17 OPINION Upsilon Pi Epsilon’s Half Century

Awards UPE offers several types of awards an- nually for students in the computing and information disciplines who have exhibited superior performance: • UPE scholarships for which each member institution may nominate one undergraduate and one graduate student, including the Dan Drew Award and the Jim Nolen Award, as well as several other categories of awards of varying amounts. • UPE/ACM Student Chapter Scholarship Awards that are offered in partnership with ACM. • Outstanding Chapter awards, awarded at the National Convention, for small Abacus Award winners, March 2005. From left: James Comer, Marsha Poucher, John Clevenger, Gabby Silberman, BJ Chow, Bill Poucher (20 members or less) and large chapters whose programs and activities have attained a high level of achievement. • “First Solver” awards are presented to the first team to solve each problem at the ACM ICPC. • UPE is the sponsor of student scholarships awarded by the IEEE Computer Society. • And it is the sponsor of prizes awarded by the Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges (CCSC), distributed among its ten regions.

UPE’s most prestigious award is the Abacus Award, presented to “an individual who has gained international renown in the profession, and over a period of several Abacus Awardee David Patterson (center), with Stephen Bourne (left) and Orlando Madrigal years has provided extensive support and leadership for student-related activities Origins of the ACM ICPC The travel budget for participants totaled a in the computing and information disci- The UPE Chapter at Texas A&M University modest $25K per contest. As the compe- plines.” The award has been given aperiod- began offering a university-wide program- tition became more popular, each of the ically since 1998. Winners of this award are ming contest in the early 1970’s, which ACM regions (12) were asked to send two shown below: gave birth to the concept of a national, teams each to subsequent contests. and eventually international, contest. The UPE has remained a sponsor of ICPC 1998: Bill Poucher current ICPC, formerly known as the ACM continuously since its inception. When 2001: Fran Sinhart Programming Contest was conceived, AT&T became the first corporate sponsor— 2002: Brenda (BJ) Chow organized, and conducted by members of for the contest in Philadelphia in 1984—it 2003: Marsha Poucher the UPE Executive Council in 1976. With ushered in the modern era, enabling the 2004: John Clevenger the approval of the ACM, the 1977 Contest ICPC to become the true international 2005: Gabby Silberman was held in conjunction with the ACM event it is today. 2006: David Patterson Computer Science Conference (CSC) in 2009: Eugene Spafford Atlanta, Georgia. National Convention 2010: Nell Dale Programming teams for the first three UPE began holding its annual national 2011: Donald Knuth ACM contests were recruited via direct meeting electronically in 2013, hosted in 2012: Alan Kay phone contacts to CS departments, re- the spring by Nova Southeastern Universi- 2013: Bjarne Stroustrup questing them to send their best 5-person ty, in its impressive Polycom telepresence

2014: James Comer teams, without any regional competitions. studio. Since travel costs are not an issue, PHOTO: CLARK BAKER, APRIL 2005. CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTIONJEFFREY 3.0 UNPORTED L. POPYACK, APRIL LICENSE 2006 (TOP); (BOTTOM)

18 acm Inroads 2017 June • Vol. 8 • No. 2 OPINION THINKING ISSUES we have been pleased to see more robust chapter participation than was practical by Tony Clear, before. Highlights from the convention are Auckland University of Technology featured in this column.

Start a Chapter Meeting Employers Upsilon Pi Epsilon has had a rich history in its first 50 years, and hopes for an equally rich future. If you don’t have a chapter at Expectations of DevOps your institution, it’s not too late to join the party. Contact the authors, find information Roles: Can Dispositions on the UPE website [5], ask around. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!  Cheers, Be Taught?

References 1. ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award; http://awards.acm. org/doctoral_dissertation/. Accessed 2017 Feb 12. 2. ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest; https://icpc.baylor.edu/. Accessed 2017 Feb 3. n the education and teacher 3. Computer History Museum, “Timeline of Computer History;” http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/. education fields there has Accessed 2017 Feb 3. been much debate about 4. Upsilon Pi Epsilon: the national computer science I honor society. SIGCSE Bulletin 5, 2 (June 1973), 23- where the balance of good 25. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/382226.382448. teaching should lie, and how 5. Upsilon Pi Epsilon website, http://upe.acm.org/. Accessed 2016 Aug 7. much the focus should be on imparting ‘content knowledge’ Jeffrey L. Popyack as opposed to fostering spe- Professor of Computer Science cific ‘dispositions’ toward learning [10,11]. The College of Computing & Informatics In science teaching, ‘essential’ dispositions [6] The underlying driving forces suggest Drexel University have been noted as, “professionalism, that it is more than just a passing enthu- Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA a passion for science and teaching, and siasm, and, in a cloud-based software [email protected] a dedication to student learning.” [9] and services paradigm, probably here to In mathematics education, Gresalfi and stay. While the term ‘DevOps’ has been Cobb [7] argued that cultivating dispo- described as ambiguous, difficult to define Orlando S. Madrigal Executive Director of UPE sitions in discipline specific contexts can and multifaceted, Smeds and colleagues Honor Society for the Computing & be a key strategy towards more equitable [16] contend that there are two camps in Information Disciplines Professor Emeritus forms of pedagogy. In nursing education, the blogosphere with opposing views. The Department of Computer Science Profetto-McGrath [14] has applied a set of one camp argues for DevOps as “a specific California State University, Chico [email protected] instruments to measure the vital role of not job position that requires both software only ‘critical thinking skills’ for practicing development and IT operations skills” and nurses but ‘critical thinking dispositions,’ the other that “DevOps cannot be sum- DOI: 10.1145/3055637 Copyright held by authors. which means those acquired skills are then marized into a job description and is more likely to be used in practice. This column than a specific role.” Some of the ‘hand reflects upon the critical dispositions that waving’ about DevOps in the cult-like employers are seeking from computing fashion of the IT industry when pursuing practitioners in emerging DevOps roles a new agenda, makes it hard to determine and how we might educate towards those the reality of the concept. Arguing that outcomes. the focus on DevOps as merely a culturally Working with my colleague Dr Waqar defined phenomenon is not particularly Hussain of our Software Engineering Re- helpful, and that a focus on engineering search Lab, we recently conducted a study practices is more productive, Smeds of employers’ expectations for DevOps and colleagues [16] offer the following roles [8]. The rise of the DevOps move- definition: ment is an emerging phenomenon within “a set of engineering process capa- Global Software Engineering, driven by bilities supported by certain cultural

acm Inroads • inroads.acm.org 19