I promised that we would have one of the best ISECON conferences on record. Well, we did it with the help of a tremendous board of directors and officers. I want to personally thank Dr. David Feinstein, Chair of the conference, for an excellent job. From all the comments, the attendees were very complimentary. EDSIG is pleased to report that JISE is back! Kevin Elder, JISE Editor, is putting JISE back on the map with the help of ComputerWorld. The double issue came out in early October of this year, and you are currently reading the third issue. This is very exciting! Congratulations Kevin Elder for a job well done. And, many thanks go out to John Corrigan, Vice President at ComputerWorld for helping make this a reality. I want to thank Mark (Buzz) Hensel, Margaret Thomas, John Reynolds, Bill Tastle, Kevin Elder, David Feinstein, Stuart Varden and Roy Daigle for their support and their hard work to help make this a banner year for EDSIG.

This banner year is best manifested in ISECON'98 which was a very special event in San Antonio, Texas. October 15-18 were the dates of this conference in San Antonio, Texas at the Holiday Inn River Walk. The banks of the San Antonio River, the Alamo, and a colorful and vibrant city of San Antonio became the back drop for a remarkably successful and memorable ISECON. Educators across the nation heralded this event as one of the most successful and most informative Information Systems Education Conferences in the history of the event.

Conference highlights included excellent presentations by distinguished speakers from: Dr. Gordon B. Davis, Jimmie Haines, Dr. Blair Stephenson, Mike Michalski, Doris Lidtke, and Linda Taylor. These experts in the field of IS set the stage for a myriad of excellent papers that were presented which enforced the theme, "When Teaching Takes Center Stage."

One of the true pioneers in the information systems field, Dr. Gordon B. Davis, is credited with creating the first IS program in the U.S. Jimmie Haines from Boeing and the University of Nebraska, is a nationally recognized Information Science and Technology professional.

Dr. Doris Lidtke, Professor from Towson University and ACM SIG Board Chair, and past President of the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board; Mike Michalski, IT Director from Belmark, Dr. Blair Stephenson, Principal of MarketLink in Dallas, who was a principal architect of one of the most successful MBA programs in the country, and Linda T. Taylor, President of Taylor and Zeno, Inc., who was voted one of the Top 100 Women in America, and is President of the ICCP Education Foundation.

This impressive and distinguished list of speakers provided robust and relevant presentations that related to critical areas that must be addressed in the classroom and within our curriculums.

"Where Teaching Takes Center Stage", became a very central theme throughout the various presentations. The various leaders emphasized that we need strong courses in soft skills as well as the technical areas.

The main conference got underway on Friday morning with a Conference Breakfast and Awards. Dr. Herman (Hoppy) Hoplin was named "Educator of the Year" by me (Jack Russell). I presented Dr. Hoplin with the EOY Plaque and a cash award from the AITP EDSIG. Dr. Roy Daigle and Dr. Michael Doran received the award for the Most Outstanding Paper.

Next year, the ISECON'99 Conference will be held in Joint session with the AITP National Conference in Chicago. The Chicago location will likely bring even larger numbers than we had in San Antonio. This could be impressive since ISECON'98 had 25 percent more than the year before. The sheer multiplicity of universities in the Chicago area and the large number of faculty who will be able to drive into the city will surely help make this the biggest ever. The joint sessions provided by the Education Foundation and AITP will also be a big bonus to ISECON and EDSIG. Moreover, the large number of AITP chapters in this area could potentially bring in educators who do not normally attended ISECON. This could be our opportunity to attract a new crowd into our organization.

The vendors were excited! The Board of Regents of the Education Foundation were excited! The President and Executive Vice President of AITP were elated! The EDSIG board is also excited. We are all excited about what happened in San Antonio, and are looking forward to next year in Chicago.

Sincerely,

Jack Russell, Ph.D., CCP
EDSIG President, 1998

[Jack Russell is a Regents Professor (Texas A&M University System) at Tarleton State University where he is the Director of Advanced Systems Development and teaches Integrated Client/Server and Web Enabled, Full Life Cycle Development classes. He also teaches within the MBA program at TSU.]

In remarks entitled "Information Systems Education: Looking Back and Looking Forward" at ISECON'98, Dr. Gordon B. Davis of the University of Minnesota, stressed that change in the IT field continues to be significant and remarkable. Of particular significance is the increased scope of IS in organizations. IT affects products and services, organizational structure, inter-organizational systems, the nature of knowledge work, communications, collaborative work, productivity of individuals and groups, and management processes. Matching the IS curriculum to the technology advances and increased scope of the field presents great challenges but also offers interesting opportunities for IS educators.

Dr. Mark Hensel, EDSIG Secretary and Conference Chair of next year's AITP National Collegiate Conference, has announced the following keynoters for the event which is to be held at the University of Texas at Arlington March 25-27, 1999:

• Friday, March 26, 1999 -- Ross Perot, President, Chairman and CEO Perot Systems
• Saturday, March 27, 1999 -- Bob McDowell, VP Enterprise Business Relationships Microsoft Corporation

For additional information, go to the AITP Web site (www.aitp.org) as well as read event updates in AITP's publications (Information Executive and the Nanosecond), along with the monthly AITP student chapter mailings.

I am beholden to you -- my colleagues -- for being honored with this award. At the same time, I am humbled when I look back on prior recipients and the wealth of talent right here in this room. My life started well before computers. As one sage, Frank Laubach, stated that life begins at eighty -- in that case I have a couple of years to go. His good news is that the first eighty years are the hardest; the second are a series of birthday parties.

The launching of IS has not been an easy one. There have been many battles and turf scuffles. As might have been expected, IS all started with management's need to do things better and faster. There was no superstructure so it fell to R&D to look for the golden nugget. World War II pushed the effort resulting in monstrous machines such as ENIAC designed by Eckert and Mauchly.

Soon Computer Science, having its origins in Math, Engineering and other disciplines, began to improve the hardware and software. Grace Hopper tried to make a business connection and came up with COBOL. Although COBOL caused many skirmishes, Grace was ready to take on IBM in trying to develop the computer on the chip concept. Micro-miniaturization she felt did not require the large IBM baby blue storage boxes that surrounded electronic equipment in computer rooms throughout the country. She lucked out a bit on this when the PC revolution roared in and spawned many new vendors in the computer industry.

It soon became obvious that the Von Neumann technology would not, by itself, generate what the computer would have to do for the user.

We are certainly indebted to the pioneers in our field spanning over a 100 years:

• Pascal
• Charles Babbage and his associate, Lady Lovelace, the world's first programmers
• Herman Hollerith
• Grace Hopper and Von Neumann - already mentioned
• E.F. Codd and his work on Relational Database Systems
• Gordon Davis for his work on IS education (he was EOY'92)
• We could even mention Bill Gates -- whether you like him or not, he's made (and is making) an impact. (He's worried about Microsoft's midlife crisis. The October 19th issue of US News and World Report reports a poll in which 73% of Americans like him and 45% think that the US Department of Justice suit against Microsoft is a bad idea)

• Great sessions and distinguished invited speakers
• The combined session of AITP/ISECON
• AITP's Student Conference
• The hope that vendors will seize the opportunity to provide career outstanding to our students

We live in a world where we are all entitled to have our own opinion. Please exercise yours to help make IS a global development of significant proportions. Let us join the parade of smart people, organizations, and companies who seek top IS/IT ideas and talent which will bring us success in the next century. As one philosopher, Frank Sully, has said, "Why not go out on the limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"

CSAB has developed new criteria for evaluating Computer Science programs. The programs must define its objectives and show how these objectives are met. There is more emphasis on outcomes assessment and the use of results from the assessment to improve the program.

For some time there has been an interest in accreditation of information oriented programs. In order to study the feasibility of such accreditation a grant proposal was made to the National Science Foundation to study this area and develop accreditation criteria.

These changes have many positive implications for the profession and indicate a maturing of the field.

We are pleased to report that Dr. David Feinstein of the University of South Alabama has agreed to serve once again as Conference Chair. The Westin O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois has been selected for the conference. The call for papers and registration information will be available shortly.