Computers and Society
As the academic year winds down, many of our SIGCAS members will be catching up on the research, reading and writing there never seems to be enough time for during the school year. I invite you all to consider sending your work and work-in-progress to Computers and Society. As you will see from this current issue, our members are involved in a variety of fields and projects, and can benefit from hearing about the work of others. Our website has been operational for about six months now, and we are continuing to solicit your suggestions for its improvement. Please take a look at it and send your comments to chair_sigcas@acm.org. Our new volunteer opportunities page has yielded several inquiries, and I hope you will take the time to see what you might be able to do to contribute to our SIG. Please see “Volunteer Opportunities” directly after this column for more details.

2008 SIGCAS Award Recipients
Congratulations again to Herman Tavani for receiving the SIGCAS Service Award and Jim Thatcher for receiving the SIGCAS Making A Difference Award. Their biographies and numerous accomplishments are featured on our SIGCAS website http://www.sigcas.org/awards-1. Jim received his plaque from past SIGCAS Chair Tom Jewett at the May meeting of Access U, an annual Accessibility Training Conference held this year in Texas. At publication time, we are still seeking a venue for the presentation of Herman’s award. We plan to feature interviews with each of them in future Computers and Society issues.

SIGCAS’ 40^th Anniversary
We will celebrate SIGCAS’ 40th anniversary in 2009, and plans are underway for this. A committee of past SIGCAS chairs, officers and others is being formed, with long-time SIGCAS members and past leaders Dianne Martin and Ron Anderson agreeing to participate in this special event. A special print edition of Computers & Society will provide a retrospective of SIGCAS activities and concerns throughout its forty years of existence, and there will a number of other features pertaining to this milestone throughout the year. If you are interested in joining this committee, please contact me at appel@sxu.edu and I will pass your name along.

SIGCAS Election Results
The results of our SIGCAS elections have come out just as this issue is ready for publication. Thank you for your support in my re-election, and congratulations to Diana Burley and Mark Perry for securing the other two seats on our Executive Committee. Mark is returning for a second term, and Diana is new to our leadership team. Soon you will be hearing from each member of our SIGCAS leadership team, and what each hopes to accomplish on behalf of SIGCAS in the coming term. One important task that I am eager to accomplish during the next three years is the revision of SIGCAS bylaws to facilitate smooth transitions from old to new leadership teams..

In This Issue
This issue features the work and interests of a number of SIGCAS members. Because, unlike many other ACM SIGs, our membership is involved in a variety of computing subfields, as well as in the areas of computer ethics, law and social impact, we have excellent opportunities to engage our community in a wide range of projects. Starting with introductions by several of our older and newer Computers and Society Editorial Board members, we learn about their interests and are encouraged to contribute to their columns and work. Then, as promised in our March issue, we feature contributions from seven participants of our SIGCAS Birds-Of-A-Feather session at the SIGCSE 2008 Symposium held in Portland, Oregon this past February. Please see Joe Oldham’s introduction to this section, as he provides a framework in which to understand the breadth of our contributors’ work and also the connections to be drawn between them. Finally, we provide an interesting report by past SIGCAS Chair Tom Jewett on the impressive accessibility work that he has been directing for the California State University system. We are always looking for new themes and article topics for our publication. Please contact us with your suggestions and submissions.