Seed corn session

There is a consensus in academia and industry that the shortage of computer science faculty is at crisis proportions. The solutions to this crisis involve actions both independent and concurrent. Some of the actions suggested for the academic arena include the offering of salaries competitive with industry wages, marketing the perceived advantages of university appointments as opposed to industrial positions, recruit from industry, provide stronger career counseling to avoid a surplus in esoteric specialties, reaffirm teaching as the primary responsibility, actively develop industrial contracts and acknowledge the validity of industrial research and selection of directions for computer sciences. Industry could help alleviate the problem by rebuilding computer science laboratories with state-of-the-art hardware, provide summer jobs and encourage graduate students to complete degree work before seeking employment. Both groups need to work together to improve channels of communication, to share personnel, seek better job matches and open research centers on both sides.