Dean's Update - December 2012

COMMENCEMENT

On December 15, SPSU held its 105th commencement ceremony. It was again the largest commencement ceremony in the history of SPSU, with almost 350 students graduating, including more than 75 from CSE. Just to put this number in context, for CSE this constitutes an increase of 50% over the fall of 2011. Since the primary strategic goal for both SPSU and CSE is to increase the number of graduates, this is a good sign.

As has become customary as well, we hosted a reception for our graduating students and their family and friends the evening before. The reception was well attended and gave faculty and staff a more informal opportunity to congratulate their students on their success. The reception was sponsored by Google, and Google thereby became the first repeat sponsor of our reception.

FURTHER RECOGNITION FOR DR CHIH-CHEN HUNG

Dr Chih-Chen Hung, Professor of Computer Science, has become an associate editor in chief for PICA, Progress in Intelligent Computing and Applications (http://www.humanpub.org/pica/home/index.html), and will serve as co-chair for the organizing committee of the sixth International Conference on Information to be held in Tokyo, Japan, from May 8-11, 2013. Dr Hung deserves our congratulations on these recognitions.

SPSU TO HOST GLOBAL GAME JAM

After a hiatus of one year, SPSU will again be the Georgia host of the Global Game Jam. As you will recall, the Global Game Jam is a world-wide event in which groups of people gather all around the world to spend 48 hours creating computer and board games. The event will be held from Friday January 25 to Sunday January 27, and we are expecting 200+ people to attend. More details about the event are available at http://games.spsu.edu/gamejam. We have already secured sponsorship from GreenWave Technology (www.GreenWaveControl.com), Area 41 Customs (www.Area41Customs.com) and the Mozilla Foundation (http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/), and I want to thank our sponsors for their support.

If you are interested in learning more about the event, or if you are interested in sponsoring the event, please contact Dr Jon Preston on 678-915-4982 or jpreston at spsu.edu.