Welcome to the December 2024 issue of ACM Inroads. There are numerous stimulating articles in this final issue for 2024 and many changes heralded for 2025.

Jodi Tims, Cindy Tucker, Mark Weiss and Stuart Zweben contribute a detailed and in-depth analysis of enrollment and retention data in computing programs. While this data is restricted to the US, we expect the analysis and identification of trends will be of global interest for comparison and contrast, particularly in relation to gender and diversity enrollment and completion trends.

To understand socially responsible computing, Gregory Hislop, Heidi Ellis, Mikey Goldweber, Samuel Rebelsky, Janice Pearce, Patti Ordonez, Marcelo Pias, and Neil Gordon provide a discussion of the implications of computing in terms of social good and harmful computing. This discussion includes examples of classroom use and best practices, which have emerged out of the work on the CS2023 Curriculum Recommendations.

Arising similarly from the CS2023 process is the article by Maurice ter Beek, Manfred Broy, and Brijesh Dongol on the role of formal methods in computer science education. Their stance is that every computer scientist must know formal methods and they provide some suggestions about how this may be done. It seems this could start some passionate debates!

In their Conversations with a Prominent Propagator column, David Bunde, Zack Butler, Christopher Hovey, and Cynthia Taylor present an interesting interview with Susan H. Rodger from Duke University. Susan is a former chair of ACM SIGCSE and is well known in computer science education research primarily for her work on JFLAP (a tool for teaching formal language and automata), visualization, the Alice programming language, and peer learning—quite a wide range of achievements.

The ever-prolific Henry Walker discusses approaches to incorporating material that addresses society, ethics, and professional topics in computing courses. He also includes some suggestions on how to use generative AI in this process.

Addressing a rather different topic, Ryan Payton emphasizes the importance of cloud computing methods for all academic researchers. This reflects the ever-increasing demands for high-performance computing in a wide variety of research areas, which exceed what can be provided by on-premises computing solutions.

Karen Green discusses the difference between computer science and computational science, grounded in her experiences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This is an example of how interdisciplinary approaches to academic computing can benefit all comers.

Andrew McGettrick, Michael Caspersen, Judith Gal-Ezer, and Enrico Nardelli take a slightly different view of similar issues in considering the need for digital skills in society in general. The context here is the European Union, and this article takes us through an analysis of progress in digital competence or informatics, highlighting the need for a framework to provide an informatics competence indicator for tracking competence development both in school and in society.

Naturally no issue is complete without a brain-teaser from our Back Page Editor, Scott Weiss. Come try your hand at trigrams, and you could win a book prize!

We are also fortunate to have another Computing Crossroads contribution from Megan Maley, Brett Becker, and Daniel Gallagher. We received this contribution well in advance of hearing the sad news of Brett's recent passing, which has shocked many in this community. We enjoyed many spirited conversations with Brett about starting the Computing Crosswords column in Inroads, and we particularly enjoyed catching up with him at the Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2023) in Melbourne. Megan Maley, a co-author and long-time collaborator of Brett's, has written the following brief tribute:

"Dr. Brett Becker was a true champion and leader of computing education. He gave his students, regardless of study level, the chance to grow under his guidance, teaching, and many valuable research initiatives. The importance he placed on accessibility and listening to others is visible in Computing Crossroads itself, where many diverse perspectives were heard, written about, and displayed. Daniel and I are both very grateful for his mentorship and support. Brett's incredible warmth, generosity, and patience will be sorely missed by all who knew him."

A fuller tribute to Brett and his long service to the computing education community will be forthcoming in the March 2025 issue of ACM Inroads.

The next issue will be a special one for us as well. After almost six years as co-Editors-in-Chief of this magazine, the time has now come for the two of us to hand over the reins to a new team. The incoming EiCs are Randy Connolly of Mount Royal University in Calgary, and Richard Blumenthal of Regis University in Denver. Both Randy and Rick are long-time contributors to the computing education community and are deeply engaged in various activities within it. We have every confidence that they will bring fresh enthusiasm, perspectives, and insights to Inroads, which will undoubtedly thrive under their stewardship.

When reflecting on our term as EiCs, we find it a bit difficult to project ourselves back to the beginning of 2019 and remember what the world looked like then, particularly as we have both had personal changes of roles and an institutional reorganization since then. We do remember very well arriving in New York City in February for a series of in-person meetings at ACM headquarters, after which we felt confident in maintaining working relationships via online means. These meetings were very helpful in setting us up for our role, but also seemed eerily prescient, fortunate, and naïve once the global pandemic the following year turned 2020 into the "year of shredded plans."

The subsequent sudden uptake in online technologies not only made Zoom a household word, but also in a strange way laid the groundwork for the sudden burst of artificial intelligence from the research labs to the mainstream with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022. We will leave it to future historians to debate the significance of these two events, but from our perspective, it seems the increasing dependence of everyday life on computing technology has brought with it both a greater need for computing education and an underlying uncertainty about where this will lead (as evidenced by the increasingly common practice of including "please" in every prompt to generative AI, as insurance against future reprisals from our digital overlords). As we have seen, a lot can change in six years—technologically, organizationally, and personally. But it seems the demand, diversity, and scope for computing education have continually increased in that time, and we find it hard to believe that this will change any time soon. Would it be too much to hope for that the next six years are a little less "interesting?"

While computing education has always been vitally important, it has never been more essential than now, and we believe ACM Inroads plays a vital role by discussing topics of global interest to professionals in computing education at all levels. We will, of course, continue to follow with interest the progress of ACM Inroads, and we may even be persuaded to contribute the occasional article (with the stress on occasional!)

One of the most revealing aspects of our experience has been the large number of people who are involved in the production of each and every issue of ACM Inroads. These include the Editorial Advisory Board, reviewers of submissions, our regular columnists, the Back Page puzzle Editor, the Associate Editors, the ACM Editorial staff, and, of course, the readers and authors of articles. This would make for a prodigiously long list of people to thank if we were to name them all, and so we will not attempt to do so here. However, there are a few who have regularly gone above and beyond the call of normal duties, and whose hard work is often unseen but vital in getting each issue to press.

We are very grateful to our regular columnists Brett Becker, Megan Maley, Daniel Gallagher, Tony Clear, David Ginat, Josh Tenenberg, Henry Walker, David Bunde, Zack Butler, Chris Hovey, Cynthia Taylor, Jeff Popyack, Pamela Leggett-Robinson, and Tamara Pearson. Your regular thoughts and insights have always been inspiring. We thank also Scott Weiss (and John Barr before him) for his unending enthusiasm and dedication to producing the Back Page.

Much of the work of each issue is done by our dedicated team of Associate Editors, who regularly deal with the unenviable task of finding reviewers and managing reviews. So, thank you to Tony Clear, Michael Goldweber, Judy Sheard, Jan Vahrenhold, Henry Walker, Jacqui Whalley, Gary Wong, and Jian Zhang for your commitment to this difficult obligation.

We have always had sterling support from the ACM Editorial staff, and our thanks go to Diane Crawford (Executive Editor), Susan Lukesh (Editorial Associate) and Bob Vizzini (Art Director). Diane has always been present to prod us when needed, or to solve some problem for us. As Diane moves into her well-deserved retirement, we wish her successor Ralph Raiola every success. We are sure Ralph will get less grey hairs from Randy and Rick than Diane got from us! Susan has worked tirelessly not only to ensure the high standard of Inroads is maintained, but also to deal with many last-minute requests and unusual situations. Bob has also been superb in dealing with unusual requests as well as the regular formatting, and inspirational in designing the front covers of each issue. So, thank you, Diane, Susan and Bob.

We remain deeply grateful to the to the ACM Publications Board for a taking a punt on a couple of academics from Down Under. We have certainly enjoyed the experience, and we hope you have too. Finally, we thank all the readers of ACM Inroads, without whom there is no magazine at all. We wish you all happy holidays and a prosperous New Year, and that 2025 may be your best year ever.

Margaret Hamilton and James Harland

Editors-in-Chief

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