The SIGCAS Outstanding Service Award is presented annually to a SIGCAS member for outstanding service to SIGCAS in carrying out responsibilities that foster the viability of SIGCAS and enable it to continue to make a contribution to the field of computing in the context of its stated mission.

Ronald E. Anderson, a Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Sociology, is the recipient of the second annual SIGCAS Service Award. Anderson completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University in1970, and since that time he has taught and done research at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. Between 1981 and 1986 he was Director of the University's Minnesota Center for Social Research. His primary specialty has been computing - developing computer-related methods in sociology as well as doing research on the social aspects of information technology. Anderson has written extensively on computer-related topics including over 75 articles and several books, such as a Houghton Mifflin college text, World of Computing, and with Edward Brent, Computer Applications in the Social Sciences (McGraw-Hill, 1990).

Over the past 20 years he has served as advisor or consultant to dozens of projects and organizations including the National School Boards Association, the Modern Language Association, EDUCOM, National Assessment for Educational Progress, the Educational Testing Service, and the Project in Equity in Technology. During the 1980s Anderson authored and published over 50 instructional software packages. These include four Sociology Simulation Games for Random House, Inc. and five training packages for Longman Crown. He served as Principle Consultant and Series Editor for the Control Data Computer Literacy Series, which included 20 software modules. Between 1979 and 1984 he was co-director with Dan Klassen of the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium (MECC) Computer Literacy projects. In 1985 Anderson founded the academic journal, Computers and the Social Sciences. Several years later it merged with the Social Science Computer Review, and he has served as Co-Editor since 1988. He is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Educational Computing Research. Recently Kluwer Academic Publishers appointed him as Series Editor for Technology Based Education.

From 1987 to 1995 Anderson served as the elected Chairperson of ACM/SIGCAS. Prior to that he was Chair of ACM/SIGCUE for 4 years. He was a Co-Chair of the 1990 SIGCAS Conference on Computers and the Quality of Life (CQL'90). In 1990 he was elected to be the regional representative of the ACM Council. From 1990 –93 Anderson headed the Task Force that developed the new ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Anderson served as a SIGCAS representative to the NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) Steering Committee from 1985 to 1993. In 1996 he served Conference Chair for the Conference on Computers in the Social Sciences. In 1998 Anderson was appointed by SIGCAS to be the ACM representative to the IFIP Working Group on Professional Ethics.

He led the development of the first Computer Literacy Assessment and later the design of the Computer Literacy Modules for lower secondary students. He has received several million dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation, mostly in the area of international studies of the role of computer technology in education. In 1991 he secured a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support the United States involvement in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) study of computers in education. He is currently writing several books on the results from that study.