About ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award

Michael E. Caspersen, Managing Director of It-vest and Honorary Professor, Aarhus University, receives the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for his contributions to computer science education research, his policy work at the national and international levels to advance the teaching of informatics for all, and his outstanding service to the computing education community.

Caspersen has authored almost 70 papers on computer science education. He is also co-author of a two-volume textbook on programming, and co-editor of Reflections on the Teaching of Programming—published by Springer-Verlag in 2008—which is a novel and innovative collection of contributions that address all aspects of teaching programming.

Since 2008, Caspersen has been heavily involved in the development of the new informatics subjects for Danish high schools and associated teacher education. By personal invitation of the Minister of Education he has served in pivotal roles as chair and co-chair of groups developing an informatics curriculum for primary and lower secondary education.

He is co-founder and chair of the steering committee for the Informatics for All coalition, Co-Chair of Informatics Europe's permanent education research working group, and was Co-Chair of the Committee on European Computing Education established jointly by ACM Europe and Informatics Europe. Recently, he also served as special advisor on digital education and skills to the Executive Vice President of the European Commission.

Mark Allen Weiss was named recipient of the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for advancing the art and science of computer science (CS) education through his textbooks, research, and curriculum design, which have affected thousands of instructors and students worldwide.

Weiss’s most significant contributions to the evolution of the data structures and programming curriculum have been through his textbooks, which have been used in numerous countries and published in multiple editions over three decades (from the 1990s to the 2010s). He was one of the first authors to include advanced topics such as splay trees and amortized analysis with detailed implementations that matched the theoretical results outlined in the programming textbooks. His books were also groundbreaking in that they included in-depth presentations of C++ features and syntax, predating the Standard Template Library (STL) with vector and string classes.

Weiss has also led and contributed to important education projects. Beginning in the late 1990s, he was part of the Advanced Placement (AP) CS Development Committee that designed the AP curriculum and wrote the AP exams taken by US high school students. He chaired the committee for four years during the early 2000s, when the exam design was changing from C++ to Java, and the underlying curriculum was putting greater emphasis on object-oriented design and abstraction principles. He is also co-leading a project to help the US National Science Foundation set priorities for CS education research.

Notably, he has also been a champion for increasing diversity in the computing field, especially through partnership programs with other universities in the state of Florida. These programs include pooling courses to improve access to relevant subject matter, providing support for especially challenging courses early in the computing curriculum, and increasing financial support for high-ability students with economic needs. As Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at Florida International University, Weiss’s leadership in these programs has significantly increased the four and six-year graduation rates at his institution.

Among his many honors, Weiss has received the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education, the IEEE-CS Taylor Booth Education Award, and the IEEE Sayle Education Achievement Award.

Robert Sedgewick was named recipient of the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for developing classic textbooks and online materials for the study of algorithms, analytic combinatorics, and introductory computer science that have educated generations of students worldwide. Sedgewick is best known for his series of Algorithms textbooks, which have been bestsellers for four decades (12 books in four editions covering five programming languages). The books develop a scientific approach to the study of algorithms, based on experiments with real code to validate hypotheses about performance based on mathematical analysis.

His recent book (with Kevin Wayne), Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach, is a comprehensive introduction to the field and was named by ACM Computing Reviews as “Best of Computing Notable Book” for 2017. His book Analytic Combinatorics (with Philippe Flajolet) is an advanced graduate text that has been recognized with the 2019 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition.

More recently, Sedgewick has been extremely active as a pioneer and innovator in online education. He has co-developed extensive online content associated with his books that attract millions of visitors annually. Sedgewick has also recorded over 100 hours of online lectures on programming, computer science, and algorithms that reach hundreds of thousands of people around the world. The Sedgewick-Wayne Algorithms online course has been listed as one of the top 10 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) of all time.

The Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award is presented annually to an outstanding educator who is appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution.  The recipient is recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies; effecting new curriculum development or expansion in Computer Science and Engineering; or making a significant contribution to the educational mission of ACM. Those with 10 years or less teaching experience are given special consideration. A prize of $10,000 is supplied by Pearson Education.

Judith Gal-Ezer was named recipient of the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for her central role in developing a groundbreaking high school computer science curriculum; her outstanding computer science education research; and her extensive service to the education community. In 1995 Gal-Ezer, who is currently a professor emerita at The Open University of Israel, led the development of a bold new CS curriculum for Israeli high school students. Her reimagined approach moved away from conventional pedagogies, which prioritized coding, to emphasizing the underlying ideas of computer science. Gal-Ezer’s framework was such a success at engaging students that many other countries used it as a model as they revised or introduced their own CS curricula.

Gal-Ezer’s seminal works include her 1998 paper “What (Else) Should CS Educators Know,” co-authored with David Harel. In the paper, she advocates that CS educators should extend their knowledge beyond regular CS coursework and be exposed to the foundational ideas of algorithms and systems. The paper inspired a whole generation of CS educators and contributed to a heightened appreciation of the inherent value of studying computing. Gal-Ezer has also been active in developing curricula at the university level. From 1985 onward, she played a prominent role in setting up computer science undergraduate programs, and later a Master’s program, at OUI, where she either personally wrote or supervised much of the CS coursework.

Outside Israel, Gal-Ezer has been an indispensable collaborator for several major organizations that advance CS education. She has been a member of key CS education journal editorial boards, served on the Computer Science Teachers Association’s (CSTA) Advisory Council, and more recently, joined the Committee on European Computing Education (CECE, a group consisting of members from the ACM Europe Council and Informatics Europe) and Google’s education advisory council.

The Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award is presented annually to an outstanding educator who is appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution.  The recipient is recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies; effecting new curriculum development or expansion in Computer Science and Engineering; or making a significant contribution to the educational mission of ACM. Those with 10 years or less teaching experience are given special consideration. A prize of $10,000 is supplied by Pearson Education.

Owen Astrachan was named recipient of the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for three decades of innovative computer science pedagogy and inspirational community leadership in broadening the appeal of high school and college introductory computer science courses. Astrachan, a Professor at Duke University, is known as “Mr. AP” because of the central role he has played in the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam taken by high school students. From 1985 to 1989, he served on the committee that writes the AP CS exam, and from 1989 to 1994 he was the Chief Reader, the person in charge of grading the exam. Over his three decades of involvement, Astrachan also played a critical role as the exam’s language changed from Pascal to C++, and later to Java, the language it is given in today.

His broad knowledge of the field, and the respect he garnered within the computer science education community, made him a natural candidate to be the Principal Investigator (project lead), in a 10-year National Science Foundation-funded effort to develop an AP CS Principles course and exam. An important goal of the AP CS Principles exam is to encourage participation in computer science by traditionally underrepresented student communities. The first AP CS Principles courses were offered in the fall of 2016 and the first exam was administered on May 5, 2017 to over 50,000 students— the largest first-year AP exam administration ever.

Astrachan has also made important contributions in several other areas of computer science pedagogy at the K-12/pre-college and college level. Many regard Tapestry, his introductory textbook for C++, as one of the best in the field. His extensive publications and talks on subjects ranging from object-oriented programming to software engineering instruction have also been highly influential. His role in advancing understanding computer science at every level has been strongly influenced by the community of students, teachers, and educators from whom he has learned and with whom he has shared so much.

The Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award is presented annually to an outstanding educator who is appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution.  The recipient is recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies; effecting new curriculum development or expansion in Computer Science and Engineering; or making a significant contribution to the educational mission of ACM. Those with 10 years or less teaching experience are given special consideration. A prize of $10,000 is supplied by Pearson Education.