News

Game Night!
Thursday, February 21, 2008 6:30pm
ACM kicked off the year right with a fun filled night of pizza, Wii, and Mario Kart. News from the meeting to come soon.


What is it all about?

In 1947, a year after the first successful electronic digital computer (ENIAC) was unveiled, ACM became the first and remains the largest international scientific and educational computer society in the world. Its founders and first members were mathematicians and electrical engineers. One of them, John Mauchly is co-inventor of the ENIAC. They formed the Association as a forum for the exchange of information, knowledge and ideas that would advance the development of computing technology and its emerging industry. Over the years, ACM's membership has included most of the men and women who led the world into what is now called the Information Age. Most of their activities are honored both in ACM publications and in ACM awards for distinctive contributions to the field, such as the A.M. Turing Award and Grace Murray Hopper Award.

ACM membership today consists of some 80,000 men and women who are largely practitioners, developers, researchers, educators, engineers and managers, all with a significant interest in the creation and application of information technologies. Overall, ACM members are vital and knowledgeable --about 90 percent between the ages of 25 and 54, and 65 percent hold a masters degree or higher; they are faithful and steadfast -- nearly 70 percent have been members for more than six years, 37 percent for more than 10 years; one third of them all started out as student members. More and more new members are joining ACM Chapters and Local Special Interest Groups (SIGs). One in five ACM Chapters is outside the United States. And some of our Institutional Members are huge leading corporations in the computing and information industries, such as IBM, DEC, and Microsoft.

As for the member activity and involvement, about two thirds of all ACM members are also members of Special Interest Groups (SIGs); many belong to more than one. About half of the 150 ACM Professional Chapters are general-interest groups, but a growing number operate as "Local SIGs" or local groups with shared computing interests. There are also about 430 operating Student Chapters.

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The contents of this Web site are the sole responsibility of ACM at SMU and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of Southern Methodist University. The administrator of this site is Austin Click who may be contacted at aclick@smu.edu.