I. Report from National The past board meeting was held at SIGCSE, March 1-5 in Houston. 1. The next national board meeting will be held October 6-7 at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington. 2. National Partners Program.
This finally seems to be viable, thanks to the efforts of Ernie Ferguson. I want to point out the generosity of O’Reilly and Microsoft in supporting this year’s conference. If any of you have contacts with a company that you think would be interested in this program, please contact Ernie. 3. Database
The database is now backed up (gee, it wasn't before?). There are plans for improving the usability of the database (e.g., allowing members to be responsible for their own data, as is the case with the AMS). 4. ACM Digital Library
The CCSC Journal is going to be moved to the public area of the Digital Library, so that it will be accessible to everyone at no charge. Since libraries do not subscribe to the Journal, this will make it easier to disseminate the papers at our meetings. 5. CCSC Regions
A moratorium on new regions was lifted. There is some interest in forming a California region. 6. Plagiarism Policy
I have been given the task of drafting a plagiarism policy for National. Such a policy must also discuss the problem of self-plagiarism. Having a policy that all regions could rely upon would take the pressure off of local committees handling problems of plagiarism. Both ACM and IEEE have existing policies, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Here are the basic issues. What constitutes plagiarism? There are clearly different levels of plagiarism. The ACM identifies the following levels. (1) Copying a significant portion of another author's paper without citing the source. (2) Copying sentences of another author's paper without citing the source. (3) Not clearly differentiating between quoted and paraphrased text. (4) Self-plagiarism. Clearly one is allowed to rely on one's previous work, the question is how much? ACM uses the rule that a paper must contain at least 25% new material. That seems a little low to me (and not necessarily all that easy to measure). Who adjudicates claims of plagiarism? ACM and IEEE are much larger organizations than CCSC, so a different adjudication process must be instituted. A claim of plagiarism could come from a region (most likely a papers chair or an editor) or from a reader of the Journal. In any case, it makes most sense that the claim to directed to the National Editor. The Editor should then gather the relevant information (what paper(s) have been plagiarized, soliciting comments from reviewers of the paper or the regional editor). A question that the ACM policy doesn't clarify is when the author accused of plagiarism should be notified about the claim. It would seem to make sense that the Editor not make the final determination. Perhaps the Editor should form a committee to analyze the claim. This committee would then report back to the Editor, who would then see that the appropriate penalties are carried out. What is the punishment if plagiarism has been determined? Here are the ACM penalties for the different categories of plagiarism. (1) Notify the author's Department Chair or Dean. Solicit a letter of apology addressed to the author of the plagiarized paper. Posting a notice in the ACM Digital Library if the paper has already been published or rejecting the paper if under submission. (2) Send a letter to the author with a copy of the policy on plagiarism and solicit a letter of apology addressed to the author of the plagiarized paper. Posting a notice in the ACM Digital Library if the paper has already been published or rejecting the paper if under submission. (3) Send a letter to the author with a copy of the policy on plagiarism and solicit a letter of apology addressed to the author of the plagiarized paper. Rejecting the paper if under submission. (4) Posting a notice in the ACM Digital Library if the paper has already been published or rejecting the paper if under submission. Send a letter to the author with a copy of the policy on plagiarism. II. Future Conferences 1. 2007 Conference at R.I.T. The 2007 CCSCNE conference will be held April 20-21, 2007 at R.I.T. I went up to Rochester to see their facilities. I don’t see any problems (other than distance). All of the conference (other than the student contest) can be held in their Student Union. The student contest will be held in the CS building. The main question we will have to answer in September is where we should put the vendors (there are a few choices). The September organizing meeting will be held Saturday, Sept. 16. There is a Radisson hotel on campus. Paul is trying to get us a good deal there for our board meeting. He has already signed the contract for the 2007 conference. The rate will be $99 (the rate in September will hopefully be lower). There are cheaper hotels farther afoot, but the Radisson is actually within walking distance (at least for our younger faculty). We will need to discuss what we want to do about the January conference/board meeting. 2. Future Conferences 2008 Meeting I went to Wagner College on Staten Island to investigate the feasibility of hosting the 2008 meeting there. They are a very small college (approx. 1400 students) but they have the necessary facilities to host the conference. They have a polygonal building that has room for plenaries, concurrent sessions, registration, and vendors. Their dining room has very lovely views of the Verrazano Bridge and Brooklyn (Wagner is on a hill facing east). I think it would be nice to have the reception and posters there and then have the dinner there (I think there is enough room for both). I met with the Provost and the President of Wagner and they seemed very excited about having a conference at Wagner. There are a couple of problems with Wagner: (1) Getting there. I think most of our attendees will want to go via New Jersey. You have to be a pretty aggressive driver (i.e., from Massachusetts) to go the direct route of the Van Wyck, to the Belt, to the Verrazano (you may recall a famous Seinfeld episode about the Van Wyck). (2) Hotel rates. There are two hotels near Wagner, a Hilton and the Staten Island Hotel. They are both more than $100 a night. There are much cheaper hotels near Newark Airport (there is a Ramada, Days Inn, and Holiday for 80-99 range). These are about 15 miles from campus. For other meetings in the future, here is a list. Feel free to volunteer your school. POSSIBLE HOST CONTACT E-MAIL Ramapo College Whoever --- Salem State College ??? Edward Wilkens ewilkens@salemstate.edu SUNY Potsdam Timothy Fossum --- Wagner College Adrian Ionescu ionescu@wagner.edu
The meeting in September 06 for CCSCNE-07 at RIT will be on September 16 at RIT. (The hotel rate is not known at present.)
Motion (AK/IR): That we accept Wagner College as the host for CCSCNE-08.
Passed: unanimous
Larry reported that both the space and dining facilities at Wagner are very good.
Other possible future hosts were suggested: Baird College
University of Hartford
SUNY Fredonia
Connecticut University
Re: item 6. (the Plagiarism Policy)
The following remarks relate to Larry's draft of the National policy and reflect the sentiment of the NE Board:CCSC should accept the ACM criteria for determining what counts as plagiarism.
Regions should refer suspected cases of plagiarism to the National Editor.
NE will put on the NE web site a notice stating that we do not accept papers involving plagiarism.
It may be that the whole matter of plagiarism can be dealt with by the ACM. Larry is to check into this possibility.
No report submitted.
The question was asked: Why is our NE journal deemed too big by National? Apparently, the real issue, as viewed by the National Editor, John Meinke, is that our papers are longer than those of other regions. National's view is that this is unfair and overly expensive.
It was noted that there would not be any such problems if National were to change it digital publications only.
It was noted that we should uniformly specify that we want a 10pt font.
CCSCNE spring 2006 board meeting Membership Chair's report With Karl's help, I have set up the department-chair majordomo lists that Larry and I compiled last fall. There are two lists for each state in the northeast -- for two-year and four-year colleagues. Each list is a member of the top-level chairs list, to which messages are sent. We have sent an introductory message explaining the purpose of the lists and a welcome message from Larry. So far about 15 messages bounced, only a few people have unsubscribed, less than I expected given our uncertain identification of appropriate names in many cases, and two departments have asked to have the new chair added to the list. I have no idea, of course, how many copies of our messages went directly to the spam bucket. Karl has also set up a POP mail account under the name "membership@ccscne.org", so that mail to our lists can go out from that address. Not only does this disguise my true identity, but there need be no visible change when the next membership chair takes over; only the forwarding address from the POP account, list ownership, and information in the welcome file will change. Editorial aside: The message to department chairs did not distinguish between two-year and four-year programs. I suggest that we consider what we might send to the former group to encourage their departments' participation in CCSCNE. There have been a variety of ACM discussions recently of ways to broaden access to computing programs, and this is an area in which CCSCNE could take some initiatives -- e.g. by having some sessions focused on two-year programs. I propose to set up a schedule of mailings to our lists, which is tentatively: Membership list: - announcement of year N+1 conference shortly after the year N one - calls for papers, panels, posters, etc in June and September - reminder of due dates at the start of November - call for participation when the preliminary program is ready (late January) · reminder of registration deadlines, mid-March Chairs list: - invitations for faculty participation in June and September (including proposals of any special panels if we wish) - call for faculty participation in late January - reminder in mid-March Enough? Finally, I recommend (and have suggested to our webmaster) that our top-level Web page include information about subscribing directly to the majordomo membership mailing list. Respectfully submitted, David Hemmendinger, membership chair 11 April 2006
There were about 118 faculty registrations this year, which is about normal.
CCSCNE WEBMASTER'S REPORT SPRING 2006 BOARD MEETING SUBMISSION SYSTEM SECURITY The paper/abstract submission system was modified so that all submissions are now password protected. Reviewers selected their own passwords when registering and were mailed the password along with their reviewer number. Password protected directory with links to the assigned papers was created for each reviewer. The creation of the directory and the links was done manually this year, resulting in a few errors that needed to be corrected when reviewers could not access something. Now that I know that the arrangement will work, I will automate the process for next year. I will also set up the web site to allow each individual area chair (papers, panels/tutorials/workshops, student posters, editor) to have their own self-selected password, rather than the current, insecure group passwords. MAILING LISTS At David's request, I have set up the department-chair majordomo lists. There are two lists for each state in the northeast (except for Vermont) -- for two-year and four-year colleges. Each list is a member of the top-level chairs list, to which messages are sent. I have also set up a POP mail account under the name "membership@ccscne.org", so that our lists can go out from that address. Means that the membership chair does not have to use his/her own email address. When the next membership chair takes over; only the forwarding address from the POP account, list ownership, and information in the welcome file will change. I have put a link to the subscription page on the left-hand menu on all of our pages and on the top-level ccscne.org page. EMAIL FORWARDING ADDRESSES The CCSCNE 2007 flyer included in the packets at this conference included some newly created forwarding addresses that are inconsistent with our current naming scheme. I will make sure that these addresses work correctly for this year. I will need the email addresses of each of the CCSCNE 2007 conference committee members so that I can set up all of the forwarding addresses. CCSC WEB HOSTING As Larry reported, CCSC wants us to host our web site from the national site. I am concerned that we will not be able to support all the services that we currently do if we switch to using the national board's site. Here are the services we are currently supporting: - Web site for current conference. - Archive of past conference web sites including program - Meeting minutes - Paper, panel, tutorial, workshop, poster submission - Review submission - Camera-ready copy submission - Conference committee mailing list - Board mailing list - Announcements mailing list - Department Chairs mailing list - Forwarding addresses for all board officer positions - Forwarding addresses for all conference committee chair positions I expect that we will have no problems with any web-page related services. I am slightly concerned that we will not be able to support all of the cgi programs that we use for submitting papers, reviews and camera-ready copy. I expect that we will be able to host our mailing lists, although I don't know if national will want to allow us as many as we currently have. My biggest concern is our email forwarding addresses. Currently, we have many addresses of the form: papers@ccscne.org that allow us to hide the personal email addresses of the conference committee members, make it easy to change the committee members from year to year, and are easy for our members to remember or intuit. I expect that we will not be able to have such addresses at national, for two reasons I don't know if we will be able to keep our domain name and point it at their host and if we can't then the address will have to include CCSCNE in the name to disambiguate it from the other regions (i.e. papers-ccscne@ccsc.org). I will contact Myles McNally and find out what the arrangements will be. If we cannot easily do everything we do now, I do not think that the $80 annual savings is worth it. Respectfully submitted, Karl R. Wurst, Webmaster 20 April 2006
Karl will see if it is possible to move our NE web site to National's, as per National's request.
All of the past best paper winners are listed on the web site, except for the year 2002. Scott will look to see to whom he wrote cheques for that year to see if he can determine who won.
As of April 17th, at the end of pre-registration and pre-conference late registration, there are 232 people registered for the contest. Of these, we have 114 regular attendees and 118 students. Also, 41 of the students are presenters and 42 of the regular attendees are presenters. It is expected that there will be on-site registrations in both categories. There are 24 teams in the programming contest. For the most part, registration went smoothly but there were more teams who wanted into the programming contest than slots. However, those teams that were refused applied well after the deadline and some seemed not to have noticed that the deadline was already way past. I am happy to say that all teams that registered up to about two weeks after the deadline were accommodated. I expect to implement several minor changes next year. I will keep the meal and optional question information on my spreadsheet as well as the national database to make it easier for me to create reports in better formats. I will emphasize in the brochure that no programming team registration is final until the registration form is in my hands. I will make sure that the team registration form is on the web site when the other forms are posted on the web site. There are two changes needed in the registration forms on the web. This year, we posted the forms with "Choice 1; Choice2; Choice3" as our banquet choices. We can not allow that to happen next year. Second, we have to find room to ask those who are ordering extra banquet tickets to choose a meal choice for the extra ticket. We need to decide how to handle workshop registration. This year, I sent an email asking for registrants and then forwarded the list to the workshop organizers. This worked fine since I had the email list from the conference registrations. I recommend continuing this method but am open to suggestions. Frank Ford, Registrar, CCSC-NE
There were 230 pre-registrations prior to April 14. About half were faculty and half students.
We could have had 30 teams instead of 24 for the programing contest.
The question was raised: Should students be allowed to bring their own laptops to the contest? It was agreed that they should not, as they could bring in code and use it during the contest.
We need to create a physical boundary where laptops, etc., are banned.
The NE web site should have links to all the important conference dates, which can then be maintained in a single location.
Should we use on-line registration for the programming contest? It was noted that ACM uses it. It was also notes that we could use PayPal for the money, have a box indicating that the registration is not effective until the cheque is received, and that when it is received, an email should be sent to the registrant so informing them.
Frank noted, emphatically, that the National database needs to be editable by the local registrars, and that Larry should ask National to implement this feature.
Union College was discussed as the likely venue for the January meeting meeting for CCSCNE-07.>From last meeting we voted to have a January meeting. But the question still remains, where should we have it?
It was agreed that the question of whether to even have a January Board meeting would not be revisited.
Hemant Pendharkar was nominated (KW/FF) to the board.
By way of review, the rules are:
A board nominee should submit a bio sketch and a statement of interest.
A board nominee should demonstrate significant commitment to CCSCNE before nomination such as serving on a conference committee.
The nomination should come after the conference is held to ensure continued interest in membership.
The board nominee should be nominated at least one month before the meeting at which the election is to be held and that the nominee should attend the board meeting where this is discussed.
The board nominee should be informed of the board decision by the chair of the board following the board meeting.
Note: The nominator and the seconder should be current board members.
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Respectfully submitted,
Richard Wyatt
(CCSCNE Secretary)