Enhancing Computer Science Education through Pacific Rim Partnerships and International Experiences

Beijng, China, October 24-26, 2008

Co-sponsored by the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and Peking University. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The Second CPATH i18n Workshop was attended by over 60 invited participants: deans, department heads, professors, and students from our Pacific Rim partner institutions in the U.S., Canada, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam. (See CPATH October Facebook). All meetings were held at the Institute of Theoretical Physics on the beautiful campus of Peking University. (See group photo.) We are indebted to our host, Professor Zhong Chen, Dean of the School of Software, Peking University, for his invaluable support in making the workshop a great success.

The workshop was organized into small working groups to develop i18n curricular modules and to lay the foundations for international pilot projects and programs. Below is a list of the Beijing working groups with links to the post workshop working group reports ( as well as the pre-Beijing workshop reading assignments). These groups will continue to work on their assignments and report back at the next CPATH workshop, Moving i18n Forward: from Ideas to Implementation, to be held May 15-17, 2009 in Portland, Oregon.

On Saturday, an industry panel comprised of Na Zeng, Microsoft China, Dahai Li, Google, China, and Sharad Garg, Intel described projects they are engaged in that are international in scope. They stressed the importance of solid foundations in software engineering and mathematics, communication skills and soft skills, and self-driven problem solving. (See notes on Industry panel).

The intensive and productive working group sessions were rewarded with sumptuous Chinese banquets on Friday and Saturday evening at the Dayi Tea Culture Center and the famous QuanJuDe Peking Duck Restaurant, respectively. On Friday, we were honored to have as our keynote speaker, Professor Fuqing Yang, Dean of the Faculty of Information and Engineering Sciences, Peking University, Director of the National Engineering Research Center for Software Engineering, and pioneering founder of the field of computer science in China. (See photo and story).

We would like to thank all the local workshop organizers from Peking University: Professor Zhong Chen, Professor Weiping Li, Xiaohua Zou, and the PKU student volunteers. Special thanks to Prof. Chen for helping us with accommodations at the elegant Lakeview Hotel next to campus.

Since October, a number of new i18n pilot projects have crystallized. We invite you to contact the coordinators for more information.

ACM SIGCSE 2009: The annual SIGCSE meeting is the leading conference on computer science education. Our CPATH poster and Birds-of-a-Feather proposals were accepted, and seven CPATH partners will be attending the conference. http://www.cs.arizona.edu/groups/sigcse09/.

Contact: Ginnie Lo, lo@cs.uoregon.edu.

Global Distributed Software Development Course: pilot project under development for 2010 by the University of Oregon and Peking University, Portland State University and Vietnam Natural Sciences University, and Avaya Corporation, our newest CPATH industry partner. Contact: Michal Young, michal@cs.uoregon.edu or Cindy Brown, Portland State University, cbrown@cs.pdx.edu.

International Summer School in Networking: two week intensive courses in campus networking and wireless networking: to be held July 2009 at the University of Oregon, and in the future possibly at the PKU Wuxi International Campus. This project is a collaboration between UO’s Computer Science department, UO’s Network Resource Startup Center, and students from China, South Africa, South America, and the U.S. Contact: Andrzej Proskurowski, andrzej@cs.uoregon.edu.

Articles about Computer Science Education in the Pacific Rim. We are developing a series of articles for possible publication in CACM and need additional co-authors. Contact: Ginnie Lo, lo@cs.uoregon.edu.

Scientific Writing in English for Computer Science Researchers: experimental course taught in Beijing Fall 2008 and to be offered Fall 2009 at the University of Oregon in collaboration with Tsinghua University. Contact: Ginnie Lo, lo@cs.uoregon.edu.

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Thanks to everyone and see you at Workshop 3: Moving i18n Forward: from Ideas to Implementation, to be held May 15-17, 2009 in Portland, Oregon.

Note: the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2009) takes place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, immediately after the CPATH workshop. Our colleague Prof. Steve Fickas, University of Oregon is the conference General Chair.