SIGCSE

Welcome to the 52nd SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (the 2021 Technical Symposium), the premiere conference for computing educators. The 2021 Technical Symposium is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE).

Last year's symposium was abruptly cancelled, even as attendees were checking into their hotels and the first night of workshops had completed. It quickly became clear that the current world situation would not abate and the SIGCSE Board asked the 2021 symposium conference and program committee to envision a symposium that was completely online. We asked even more of our conference co-chairs Mark Sherriff and Larry Merkle and program co-chairs Pamela Cutter, Alvaro Monge, and Judy Sheard than we ever have in the past. There are always countless hours that go into planning an event like the symposium. Usually, though, you have the ability to count on past experiences, stories, and former chairs to help you through tough spots or interesting situations. This year, there was no playbook to fall back upon. This had never been done before for the Technical Symposium. As a board, we are truly grateful for what has been accomplished by this talented group and are looking forward to this new experience.

The SIGCSE Technical Symposium provides us with a chance to honor two people for their contributions to computer science education and the SIGCSE community. The annual SIGCSE award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education will be given to Stephen Edwards (Virginia Tech). Stephen is probably best known within the community for Web-CAT: the Web-based Center for Automated Testing that he introduced in 2004. The automated grading software that is still in active use has processed over 3 million assignments submissions on the dedicated Web-CAT server, which doesn't take into account the approximately 60 institutions that use it on their own dedicated servers. Stephen's contribution to computer science education is prolific with over 100 publications, one of which was named to the SIGCSE Top 10 Symposium Papers of All Time in 2019. He is an ACM Distinguished Educator and has contributed to the community through service to the symposium as well as the supervision of numerous graduate students.

The annual SIGCSE award for Lifetime Service to the Computer Science Education Community will be given to Cary Laxer (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology). There are likely very few people who have attended a SIGCSE Technical Symposium in the last 30 years who have not met Cary Laxer. Cary has been behind the registration desk for the Technical Symposium since 1996 and was program co-chair and conference co-chair in 1993 and 1995 respectively. During his time behind the registration desk, he has truly been the face of the Technical Symposium for many attendees. He was the first person to greet you, whether new to the event or having attended multiple times. Over the years he has watched the Technical Symposium and the job of the registration team grow and has overseen the transition of many of the functions that used to be done by hand to more automated and modern systems. He has also served numerous times as registrar and treasurer to the ITiCSE conference and has served for many years as a program evaluator for the Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC) of ABET where he is currently serving as chair of the CAC. This will be Cary's last year with the registration team of the Technical Symposium and we wish him well in this next stage of his career.

Please join me and the rest of the SIGCSE Board in congratulating both of them on their welldeserved awards.

In addition, the SIGCSE Test of Time award will be presented at the symposium for the first time. This is the second year for this award, but the first time it will be presented at the symposium. The winning paper is The Incredible Shrinking Pipeline (1997) authored by Tracy Camp. This paper is being recognized for its long-lasting contribution to computing education. In particular, this paper focuses on women's participation in computing and its decline from 1980 to 1994. The paper demonstrates the ways in which participation of women has declined and ultimately leaves the readers with the question of what the community can do to improve the situation. The paper has been cited over 650 times and has had a profound influence on many notable works discussing gender disparities in undergraduate computing since its initial publication. Although the problem documented in the paper has not been solved, it is no longer the case that the problem is brushed aside. Numerous efforts developed and continue to evolve new ways to address and stop the shrinking pipeline.

The 52nd SIGCSE Technical Symposium will be an amazing event. I hope that you enjoy the sessions, learn something new about computing education, meet new colleagues and friends, and catch up with ones you may have missed last year.