Department of Computing

Message from the ACM President

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is in full swing this year. I'm sending this email to introduce to you our executive members and inform each of you what we have planned.

We currently have six executive positions filled by a variety of students. Those positions are President, Vice President, Vice President of Programs, Treasurer, Secretary, and Webmaster. We are adding a new position this year, ACM Reporter. The ACM Reporter will be a central point of contact that can distribute news to the various sources our department uses (CS Website, ACM Website, Facebook, and TV Blog). What follows is a list of executive members.

President, Jeremiah Dangler 

Jeremiah is a 2nd year graduate student who has been involved in the ACM for 2 years. He 

  • held the role of webmaster in 2011-2012 academic year
  • organized and participated in ICPC programming contest for the last two years
  • has volunteered at the student ran help desk for three years
  • organized ACM hikes for Summer 2012
  • is a member of the ETSU's Upsilon Pi Epsilon chapter
  • holds graduate assistantship with Emerging Technology Center (ETC)

Vice President, Joseph McDaniel 

Joseph is a senior undergraduate student who has been involved in the ACM for 1.5 years. He

  • held the role of Vice President in the 2011-2012 academic year
  • participated in the ICPC programming contest in Fall 2011
  • helped organize three large-scale LAN parties to fundraise for both the ACM and computer science department
  • organized research- and academic-oriented meetings for ACM for the past three semesters
  • is a member of the ETSU's Upsilon Pi Epsilon chapter
  • is a McNair scholar with 2011-2012 Academic Year Internship

Vice President of Programs, Raquel Prieto 

Raquel is a senior  undergraduate student who has been involved in the ACM for 2 years. She

  • held the role of Secretary in the 2010-2011 academic year
  • held the role of Vice President of Programs in the 2011-2012 academic year
  • participated in the ICPC programming contest in Fall 2011
  • completed an internship at Eastman in Summer 2012
  • is a member of the ETSU's Upsilon Pi Epsilon chapter

Secretary, Jocelyn Borgers 

Jocelyn is a senior  undergraduate student. She 

  • participated in the ICPC programming contest in Fall 2011
  • completed an internship at UT Medical Center in 2010
  • is a member of the ETSU's Upsilon Pi Epsilon chapter
  • is an Honors-in-Discipline student

Treasurer, Kristen Bales 

Kristen is a 2nd year undergraduate who has been involved in the ACM for 1 year. She

  • is an Honors-in-Discipline (CS) student
  • receives the Eastman Computer Science Merit Scholarship with a Summer 2012 Internship
  • is a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science

Webmaster, Chris Eaton 

Chris is a senior undergraduate student who has been involved in the ACM for 2 years. He

  • is an Honors-in-Discipline dual-concentration CS/IT student
  • participated in the ICPC programming contest in Fall 2010 and Fall 2011
  • has attended and help organize ACM LAN events in previous years
  • participated in the ACM Intramural Ultimate Frisbee in Spring 2012
  • completed an internship at Eastman in Summer 2011
  • completed an internship at OSIsoft Inc. in Summer 2012

We are working on a new website that will be parked at acm.etsu.edu. We also have a new email address acm@etsu.edu. All mail sent to this address will be forwarded to Jeremiah, Joseph, and Raquel. We provide several services and events for students and faculty in the Computer Science department. All students and faculty are welcome to participate in any events. The following is a list of services and events we provide.

Canteen
The canteen is located at Nicks 437, the ACM meeting room, with drinks and food available for a small donation. We currently have the following items: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Propel Water, Candy Bars, and Candy for $1.00 donation and Water, Trail Mix, and Crackers for $0.50 donation. This money goes towards providing food, prizes, etc. for ACM members at a variety of events.

ACM re-occurring activities:

General Meetings
General meetings occur twice a month from 11:30am to 12:30pm on Wednesdays. We have two types of speakers. The first are regional employers that speak about their company and job opportunities. They typically will give a presentation the first half of the meeting and take questions the second half. The current list of employers include: Eastman, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Mountain State Health Alliance (MSHA), CGI, and OSIsoft. The second type of speakers are faculty or practitioners talking about research, special topics courses, etc. General meetings include pizza for ACM members. When employers provide pizza it is free to everyone. We typically have 20-35 attendees per meeting but this year we expect that to grow. Our first general meeting of the year had 65 students attending.

Gaming Party
Our gaming party is a social event that occurs every 2 weeks and starts at 2:00pm on Fridays. This social event began in Fall 2011 and was a great success. We use Nicks 491 to play Steam games (Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2). This year we are expanding the gaming parties to include board games. Our first gaming event had 10 people participate in Team Fortress 2 play.

Hiking
Hiking trips are a new social event added over the Summer 2012. We had 4 successful hikes with 8-10 people attending that included undergraduates, graduates, and faculty members. This event occurs every 2 weeks alternating with the gaming parties. The hikes occur on Fridays after lunch. We carpool from behind Nicks Hall at 1:00pm to regional hikes. Hikes during Summer 2012 included Roan Mountain (Carvers Gap), Laural Falls, Buffalo Mountain, and Watauga Dam. 

Tech Talks
Tech talks are a new idea that came into existence last year but never started. This year we plan to meet twice a month on Wednesdays from 4:00pm - 5:00pm. These events will have students and faculty presenting on technical topics in 20-40 minute segments. The goal is to expose students to topics that they don't see in class and give students experience in speaking on technical topics. Our first two presenters will be Billy Overton on Home Automation with Speech Recognition and Nathan Thomas on Procedural Terrain Generation. 

Help Desk
The help desk has changed from previous years. Previously, a room was dedicated to the help desk and volunteers would provide help throughout the day. This would require Dr. Bailey to organize about a dozen students to have a set schedule for the help desk. Last year the format was changed. Instead of Dr. Bailey organizing various students, a few graduate students organized the help desk into a different format. Now, one day a week several students are available for 2 to 3 hours. This year the help desk will run each week on Wednesday from 2:35pm - 4:00pm in Nicks 491. The help desk is primarily setup to help freshmen in 1000 level courses however, support can be provided in other courses.

Intramural Sports
The ACM supports teams that participate in intramural sports. Spring 2012 had a successful year in the ultimate freebie leagues. We have plans to field a volleyball team for Fall 2012. Prep work for the annual faculty/student volleyball game that occurs at the picnic. ; )

Other Events:

Big Frakkin LAN/Board Game Party (Fall and Spring)
This event was first started to raise money for Dr. Sanderson's scholarship fund and was such a great success we continue to hold this event each semester. We clear all computers off the tables of the Wilson Wallas lab and setup space for students to bring in their computers to play LAN games. We also setup an area for console gaming with at least one projection screen setup and several large flat-screen TVs. There is an area dedicated to table top games and food. This event will run from 2:00pm to about 2:00am. Our canteen is available for snacking and drinks. This semester we will hold this event on Saturday November 17th.

ICPC Programming Contest (Fall)
The ACM organizes teams and practice sessions for the annual ACM ICPC Regional Programming Contest. In the last 2 years we have sent 4 teams with 3 members each. Members of the ACM proposed an elective course be offered in Summer 2012. We were successful with Dr. Wallace's help in getting a Competitive Programming class started. We would also like to thank Dr. Wallace for teaching that course. Many students who took the course will be going to this year's Programming Contest in mid-October.

ORNL Trip (Fall)
Each year Dr. Phieffer organizes a trip to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With increased participation of ACM members he has asked us to organize the trip this year. Several executive members will be heading a committee to accomplish this. We anticipate high participation this year.

Dr. Horrible Sing Along (Fall)
This is a new social event that was proposed last year. The ACM will be working with Buctainment to organize a Dr. Horrible Sing Alone on campus sometime this year. We hope to draw crowds from all departments on campus and raise some money for the ACM.

Employer Showcase (Spring)
ACM members have commented that the college level career fair seems geared more towards Business students with few IT professionals representing their company. To remedy this, we will be working with Melinda Laprade to hold a employer showcase prior to the college career fair. This event would allow employers to come and talk with students about what skills they will need for a position within their company. This event is geared towards the IT side of companies and not the HR side. This is still in the early planning phase as we work on a format for this event.

You are welcome to reply to acm@etsu.edu with any questions, comments, or suggestions.