Dr Brian C Ladd is attending two interesting workshops this summer: Algorithms, Scripting, and Programming for Visual Art, La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA at the end of May and then, a week later, the Emergent Academic Workshop the the Emergent Games HQ in Chapel Hill, NC.

The first workshop is part of a CPATH grant from the NSF, Revitalizing Computer Science Education Through the Science of Digital Media. It is scheduled to examine programming in a visual context. This is an important consideration both for the continued improvement in style and substance of our CS1 courses and for Dr. Ladd's CS1 textbook (tentative title: Simple Computer Games).

The second workshop is designed to introduce Emergent's sophisticated middleware and game engine to academics. Attendees will receive instruction in using Emergent's tool chain to support students in the production of high quality games in upper-level programming courses.

Tony Capone, Eric Hutchins, and Jamie Sinclair presented their year-long project, Virtual Academics at the Spring 2008 BOA. Click on the link to see the presentation.

The CS Department Board of Advisors will hold its Spring 2008 meeting on Saturday, 26 April 2008, in Dunn Hall room 102. An informal get-together will be held on Friday evening prior to Saturday's event. All CS students are strongly encouraged to attend both the Friday get-together and the Saturday Board meeting. The meeting will include presentations by CS students engaged in recent internships.

Dr. Brian Ladd and Dr. Susan Haller will be presenting a special session at the Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) Symposium 2008 in Portland, Oregon in March. The special session will be held Friday, March 14, 2008 from 10:30AM to 11:45AM. SIGCSE is the premier international conference on computer science education. The session will address the advantages and disadvantages of using computer game development as motivation for students and as a vehicle for teaching computer science classes.

Dr. Timothy Fossum has accepted a one-year appointment as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Fossum's primary responsibility will be for the Scholarship for Service Program, which is a cybersecurity education initiative. Dr. Fossum will be on leave from SUNY Potsdam while serving at NSF.

Dr. Brian C. Ladd is presenting a short talk at Computers and Writing 2007. The talk, titled (with apologies to Christopher Alexander) A Timeless Way of Arguing will explore the similarities between software design patterns and stylized forms of argument in rhetoric. From Aristotle to Hugh Burns (author of one of the first computerized writing support tools), rhetoricians have cataloged correct forms of argument; they have included where and when to apply the argument forms and how to deploy facts in support of them. C&W2007 is meeting on the campus of Wayne State University 17-20 May 2007.

Dr. Brian C. Ladd will be participating in the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges - Northeastern 2007 (CCSC:NE2007) Conference, April 20-21 at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Dr. Ladd is a member of a panel on what faculty face when supporting undergraduate research. The panel will range broadly over the area from senior capstone projects to summer REUs.

As a teaser, Dr. Ladd says that the faculty member must remain flexible in light of student needs. "Push your student as hard as necessary but no harder," Dr. Ladd says, paraphrasing Einstein. If you want more, see you in Rochester.

Here are some important upcoming ACM events:

• March 1st - Programming/Math Contest
  Problems from both math and computer science departments. Will include problems relevant to either 201/151 or 203/152. Watch for flyers.
  Contact: James Snow
• March 2nd - Media Lab
  Help transform the media lab (next door to the Unix lab) into a usable area once again.
  Contact: Cody Zink
• March 10 - Server Install Fest
  We will be installing and configuring software on 4 of the new ACM servers. No concrete plans for these machines have been made - yet! For now we will simply be installing operating systems (most likely Debian Linux) so we can evaluate their usefulness and have systems ready to run once we do come up with a task for them. Contant Nathan Sprangers or James Snow if you have ideas, suggestions, or needs on this front.
  Contact: Nathan Sprangers
• March 21 - Joint ICT/ACM Gaming Night
  Co-sponsored by the ICT department, this will be a night dedicated to playing tons of games on a variety of platforms. Come meet our neighbors in the ICT department and other gaming enthusiasts. More info to come.
  Contact: James Snow

The preliminary Fall 2007 course schedule for Computer Science is available for review. This schedule is subject to change.

"Go FIGure", a new Freshman Interest Group (FIG), will be offered for the first time in Fall 2007. This FIG is designed for incoming students who are interested in Math and Computer Science. It will consist of dedicated sections of MATH 151 (Calculus I), CIS 201 (Computer Science I), and HIST 100 (World History).

The CIS 280 class ("Selected Languages") offered in Fall 2007 will cover the Perl programming language. Perl is a popular scripting language that has powerful text processing capabilities and is used in many system administration and web server applications.

Dr. Brian C. Ladd will present his paper, XYZZY: Finding New Magic in Text Adventure Games, as one of twenty (20) peer-reviewed papers at the Second Annual Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development aboard a Disney Cruise Ship 21-25 February 2007. The paper reports on his success using text adventure game and text adventure game engine design and development to teach object-oriented programming in a project-based introductory course. The paper and Dr. Ladd's presentation to the conference will both appear on the conference DVD and should be available soon after the conference concludes.

At the Fall 2006 meeting of the CIS Board of Advisors in November, Drs. Timothy Fossum and Susan Haller pledged a donation of $5000 to spearhead the establishment of a CIS Alumni Scholarship fund. The fund will provide scholarships for students who attend SUNY Potsdam and who major in computer science.

Drs. Fossum and Haller are faculty in the CS program at SUNY Potsdam. Dr. Fossum serves as chair of the Department of Computer Science.