Outstanding Service Award (2012) — Elizabeth “Beth” Hawthorne
Elizabeth Hawthorne is a Senior Professor of Computer Science at Union Community College and is a member of several ACM Special Interest Groups including SIGCSE, SIGCAS, SIGITE, and SIGSAC as well as the IEEE Computer Society, where she is listed in the annual Women in Engineering Directory. Beth is actively engaged in many ACM activities, serving as Chair of the ACM Committee for Computing Education in Community Colleges and as a member of the ACM Education Council. Additionally, she writes the quarterly column Community College Corner for ACM Inroads, and serves on the ACM-W Council as chair of the Community College Connections committee.
She served on the 2013 Computer Science ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force Steering Committee and was responsible for coordinating the review and revision of the updated Social Issues and Professional Practice knowledge area. During the past three years, Beth has successfully involved the SIGCAS community and industry experts and has guided them toward a consensus as they developed an extensively updated Social Issues and Professional Practice knowledge area that includes two new important topics, professional communication and sustainability.
The new Social Issues and Professional Practice knowledge area includes core and elective topics, learning outcomes and course exemplars which will allow computer science faculty to better integrate the social, legal and professional leraning outcomes into their computer science curriculum. The success of the extensive changes may be attributed to Beth’s passion for social and professional matters, her ability to listen to others and to communicate her ideas; to delegate work when appropriate; and to skillfully work with the SIGCAS community, industry expert and the 2013 Computer Science ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force Steering Committee to organize the final product.
Text of the Plaque:
Chair, Social/Professional Knowledge Area, 2013 ACM/IEEE-CS
SIGCAS/Computer Ethics Advocate Among 2-Year Colleges
Chair, ACM CCECC
Member, ACM Education Council