John had to wait until there were enough proceedings to eliminate the newsletter issues

1. The Journal began as a newsletter that contained some contributed papers on topics that the editor thought were of interest to the members. It was Xeroxed and mailed from Evansville for the first four years.I was the publisher and various board members put together issues. John Meinke became the editor for Volume 4. (He had been editing the Eastern proceedings which were published by Montrose.)

2. The First Three Southeastern Conference Proceedings were edited and published by Lynn Veach Sadler at Methodist College

3. John had to wait until there were enough proceedings to eliminate the newsletter issues

4. Today the problem is which proceedings to pair to keep the volume under 400 pages

5. The Development of Regions 5.5 South Central March 1990, St. Edwards, Barbara Owens 8.4 Rocky Mountain October 1992, Metropolitan State, Chuck Howerton 10.4 Midwest September 1994, Fort Wayne, Curt White 10.5 Central Plains March 1995, Southwest Baptist, Scott Sigman 11.4 Northeastern April 1996, University of Hartford, Ingrid Russell 15.2 Northwestern October 1999, Gonzaga, Rob Bryant 18.6 MidSouth March 2003, Rhodes College, Donna Satterfield 23.6? Southern California (Board approved for March 2008, Steering Committee formed) As the appointed Conference Coordinator, I have attend every CCSC board meeting for the entire life of the Consortium (John Meinke is not far behind).

6. I am engaged in a project to scan all of the earlier issues and offer the articles to ACM. If they don’t accept them we will link from our page to a table of contents page for each issue, whence to the .pdf file. We will include all the back issues of Eastern (when they were not part of the Journal). In recent years the papers in the Journal have been entered into the ACM Digital Library. On the CCSC website’s Publication tab is a table of links to the Journal issue’s table of contents, from which the full text of any article can be viewed with a free ACM account.

7. The rapid growth in the number of regions in the early 1990s forced a restructuring of the Consortium. • The Board was reconfigured to consist of National officers and regional representatives. • “The Board will form initially six CCSC representational regions for purposes of guiding the revision of the by-laws.”—Nov 2, 1995 • “From this meeting on, every new conference document produced will refer to the conferences as "CCSC:Southeastern Conference", etc. ”—Nov 2, 1995 • “The initial regions will be roughly centered around the current conferences and will cover the entire U.S. and North America.” ”—Nov 2, 1995 • The Membership Secretary asked Regions to help with conference registration (conference registrations rose from 243 in 1993-4 to nearly 400 in 1996-7) • The Journal Editor (Publications Chair) sought assistance in gathering papers for each proceedings. • The establishment of the Northeastern conference and the consequent dropping of the Eastern Proceedings from distribution by CCSC was resented by Eastern, but they refused to merge. • Northeastern was the 6th conference and it was perceived that it strained the limits of the Board to provide services. • “The new New England region conference is forming. The steering committee will meet on March 25, and the first conference will be held in the spring of 1996. The motion was made (and seconded) that the Board officially approve the New England conference. In discussion, it was decided to defer action until after the report of the Growth Committee. “—March 1, 1995 • “"The [Growth Committee] report suggested that a budget for new conferences be solicited before approval from the board.  It was suggested that this was asking too much, since even after the effort was expended the board could still refuse to give approval.  Sue Fitzgerald suggest that it simply be stated that the board "must approve" all new conferences, with no specific requirements given.  Will Mitchell then moved that the New England conference be approved.” –March 1, 1995 • In 1998 a new region in the Northwest was initiated • “Chuck Howerton reported attending the organizational meeting in April to provide guidance to the conference committee on behalf of the consortium. The organizational meeting went very well, subcommittees were formed and assignments were accepted for all required duties. Since then, another meeting was held to continue the organizational process. The Northwest Conference is in the advanced planning stages with the first Northwest Conference to be held during the 1999-2000 academic year.”—Nov 5, 1998 • “Will Mitchell reported that he is not actively working on starting new conferences.’ –Feb 25, 1998 • “"The CCSC Board will ask Will Mitchell to seek to determine whether or not there is interest in the development of a west coast conference." –Oct 17, 1996

8. Formation of the MidSouth Region • I had attempted to solicit interest in a Memphis area region when I was Shreveport in 1999. When I moved to Little Rock I tried again. • “Will has had conversations with several people about whether there is interest in a new region in the Mississippi valley. The goal is to find ten people willing to get together (in one room at at time) to plan a conference. Whether that happens will be an indication of whether there ought to be such a conference. • John wanted to know the implications for Central Plains of a conference in Central Missouri. • Will said the goal of "regional" conferences is for people to be able to get to one in three to four hours drive (or less) so people can get there by noon on Friday and be home on Saturday night. He said we don’t have many members from these areas, or from Memphis, because there isn’t a close conference. In other words, a new region should not negatively affect existing conferences.”—Mar 8, 2000 • “There is potential for a conference in the Memphis area but nothing has transpired since the initial discussion.” –Oct 12, 2000 • “Report to the Board of CCSC on Formation of the Mid-South Region—William Mitchell Feb 27, 2002 • I would like to share with the Board the level of interest that I have received in my second try to form a steering committee for a new region in the mid-south. I will present a motion to the Board to approve the exploratory meeting on April 20 at Christian Brothers University in Memphis and the recognition of a new region should they decide to organize a regional conference for the spring of 2003. • There are obviously preparations that the Consortium must make to add a new region. The first is adjust the workload on the Editor (and on the Registrar). We did not try to DECREASE the number of conferences so that one volunteer registrar could handle the load, instead we have spent most of this year debating how we can reorganize how the Consortium operates to handle the requirements of growth. We may have to spend part of next year helping the Editor prepare for a greater workload. •  The second is the impact that a new region will have on existing regions. I have 10 institutions that have volunteered representatives to serve on the steering committee. It is apparent that many of these institutions have never sent either a presenter or attendee to one of our conferences and the non-involvement of these schools is the reason for starting the region. The remaining volunteers are enthused about ONE past encounter, indicating that while they enjoyed the experience, they did not feel a part of the region they attended, principally because the region conference only came into their geographic area infrequently. The folks at Millsaps have flown to South Central conferences for years and have been rewarded now with the hosting of a second conference (I visited with Dr. McCarley three years ago about starting a new region and he said that he’d have to fly up to Missouri, so he’d just as soon fly to Texas). Other Mississippi schools will come when the conference is in Mississippi, every five years (3 Mississippi colleges and 4 Louisiana colleges sent presenters to the 1998 conference in Millsaps (10 of 31 presentations). Only 6 presenters came from those Mississippi Colleges in the next three SC conferences and 5 from the Louisiana colleges (out of 110 presenters). For some of these schools it will still be shorter for them to drive to Texas than to Memphis. UALR will go to the Mid-South region instead of Central Plains or South Central, given the new alternative. We are about as far west in Arkansas as will be affected. • There was significant objection to the new region from the South Central representative. • I am not sure that we need another region along the lower Mississippi.  as it stands now southern Mississippi is part of the south central region. In fact, Millsaps College in Jackson, MS is hosting the 2003 SC conference.Prior to the establishment of Central Plains there were from 60-80 papers submitted to sc, after the establishment of Central Plains that dropped to 40 for a short period....we seldom reach more than 33 these days. • If Memphis is interested seriously, then they should partake in either Central Plains, South Central, or Southeast.  It seems to me that we have saturated the southern part of the country. --Feb 22. 2002

9. The Board adjourned without any action on my report, so I contacted the CCSC President : From:Dr. William Mitchell To:Ingrid Russell Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 9:44 AM Subject: Mid-south organizing meeting I filed a report at the board meeting giving notice and requesting permission to hold an organizing meeting in Memphis on April 20.   I don't know if I need Board approval, President approval, or it is just part of my job description.   In any case, I need to announce the meeting to the group this week. I followed up after the Steering Committee meeting with another report: From: "Dr. William Mitchell" <wmmitchell@ualr.edu> To: "Ingrid Russell" <irussell@MAIL.HARTFORD.EDU>; "Catherine C. Bareiss" <cbareiss@olivet.edu>; "John Meinke" <meinkej@faculty.ed.umuc.edu> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 2:09 PM Subject: Fw: Fw: Info request from the Spring Conferences As I reported at the Spring Board meeting, I had planned an organizing meeting for a Memphis area conference.   It proceeded as planned and the report of the meeting follows.   the steering committee is experienced and enthusiastic but they average less than one CCSC conference attended.   I have been waiting for the committee to work out the location details and the date for their first conference, and this decision has just been made (bottom of message).   We will work back now to schedule milestones such as call and deadlines.   I conference will call itself the Mid-South conference.   John, I would recommend pairing the new conference with Central Plains, thus giving South Central room to have a larger proceedings.As I understand the procedure, the region will form at the first conference and I will represent the new conference to the board until then.I would make this report to the board except the mailing list is down.  Bill and Cathy and Ingrid were previously in the loop. --Will

10. The MidSouth Call for Papers evoked this response from the Editor: • I am very concerned in that the Spring Board meeting minutes indicate that Will Mitchell as conference coordinator would be submitting a motion to the Board -- something that I have never seen!There is reference to a 20th April meeting at Christian Brothers and that Christian Brothers  would be the first host if the conference goes through -- and the host is now Rhodes College, not what was originally "mentioned". • There has been no coordination with me regarding Proceedings -- Will's recommendation is that they be combined with Central Plains, and there is a time difference between the two -- the one thing that I have always asked is that individual conferences negotiate their deadline dates -- and that does involve negotiating the dates and enforcing those dates for both conferences.  Will has allowed the potential new conference to give a total of eight weeks for preparation of the proceedings, but has forgotten that the recommended paired conference is four weeks later than his potential conference!What about ACM in cooperation status?  As far as I know Central Plains will have the in cooperation status -- this proposed new conference does not indicate any in cooperation status, which means that they cannot be part of our regular proceedings, and most critically cannot be part of a combined conference!This alone torpedoes the proposed conference!--part of September 16, 2002 email • At the October 19, 2002 the Board took the following actions: • Some members feel that there is no such procedure at present, or that the present procedure needs to be updated: • Do new conferences automatically create new regions? • Can any region have more than one conference per year? • Can resulting papers be published in the Journal? • Motion: We place a moratorium on the formation of new conferences and regions until we have an updated mechanism in place for creating new conferences and regions. An exception will be made for the Mid-South 2003 Conference. Yes-12; No-1: • During discussion of this motion, a number of points were made: • -- The President-Elect ran on a platform of consolidation and was elected; hence the spirit of this motion seems to be the will of the membership; • -- Carl Steidley read the old CCSC procedures for the creation of a new conference. These do seem to be outdated. • -- No explicit Board approval was given for the Mid-South Conference. • -- New conferences can cause attendance drains on current conferences. • Motion: To approve the Mid-South 2003 Conference budget, as revised. Yes-unanimous: Passed. • -- The Treasurer spreadsheet column will be designated ‘Other’ with a footnote: "For the Mid-South Conference." • -- The Mid-South "Region" should be removed from CCSC Website. • -- For all practical purposes, the 2003 Mid-South Conference should be treated as any new conference.

11. The First MidSouth Conference was held at Rhodes College March 28-29, 2003 and Treasurer William Myers attended. He collected money and paid bills and met with the Steering Committee to tell them that CCSC would not sponsor a second conference. He pointed out that ALL the proceeds from this conference belonged to CCSC. The Steering Committee voted to hold a conference on their own at Little Rock in 2004.

12. I registered the Mid-South College Computing Conference as an Arkansas non-profit corporation and obtained IRS approval

13. The second conference went nicely and six months later the invitation to merge was received. From: "H. Conrad Cunningham" <hcc@cs.olemiss.edu> To: "willmitchell" <willmitchell@lightbound.com> Cc: "Donna K Falconer" <dkfalconer@ualr.edu>; "David Naugler" <naugler@ldd.net>; <owens@ulm.edu>; "H. Conrad Cunningham" <hcc@ark.cs.olemiss.edu> Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 4:56 PM Subject: Re: CCSC Invitation MSCCC Board:MSCCC is incorporated with a self-perpetuating board and does not have "region membership" like the other regions.  However, if we accept the invitation to join CCSC (which I recommend), we will need to create a regional governance structure (we can copy that of any of the other regions, all of which are on the CCSC website).   A year ago, I was somewhat ambivalent on accepting CCSC membership.  After the hard work that Will and Donna and the 2003 conference committee had put in to make the first conference a success, I found it quite upsetting for a bunch of people in Texas to try to stop us from forming our own conference in this region.  No one has asked most of us whether we wanted to be part of a CCSC region and they seemed to claim most of the territory for their own (at least Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana).  Then MSCCC had incorporated and gained SIGCSE in cooperation status. However, after running into a few financial problems last year, seeing our key leaders move on to other places, having to face the difficulty of organizing a conference again without any national supports from CCSC, I am in support of the measure--although not without some reservations.The advantages to joining:* financial backing from CCSC if something goes wrong* national supports on things like vendor recruitment, publication, etc. * publication of the MS papers in a "journal"* benefits of CCSC membership to our attendees* less overhead from trying to maintain a corporate structure.Disadvantages?* loss of independence to a national board, subject to its policies, etc.* loss of control over any profits that we might generate, being dependent upon the national board for allocation of any funds.On the whole, it probably has more advantages than disadvantages as long as he CCSC national board stays rational.  However, we might want to hold off dissolving MSCCC, Inc., until we see how things work out during the next few months.  - Conrad

14. From: "H. Conrad Cunningham" <hcc@cs.olemiss.edu> To: <msccc05@lists.cs.olemiss.edu>; <dbrandon@cbu.edu>; <woodall@mc.edu>; <englandr@rhodes.edu> Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 3:23 PM Subject: [MSCCC05] MSCCC to become CCSC MidSouth MSCCC 2005 Conference Committee, etc.:As most of you know from email on the MSCCC05 list a couple of weeks ago, the Consortium of Computing Sciences in Colleges (CCSC) has extended MSCCC an invitation to join it as its ninth region -- CCSC Mid-South.The MSCCC, Inc., Board held some discussion in email last week and during a WebCT chat session on Thursday voted to accept the invitation.  There are, of course, a number of details to work out, but we expect the "merger" to be consummated at the end of the next CCSC Board meeting in St. Louis at the SIGCSE Technical Symposium in St. Louis in late February.I think we will be able to operate the 2005 conference as CCSC Mid-South.  The proceedings should be published as a part of the CCSC journal.This should not have much effect on anyone's work immediately, except mine, Donna Falconer and Jean Hendrix's as vendors/sponsors chairs, Charlotte Owens as authors' chair, and Will Mitchell's as registrar.The MSCCC Board voted to continue its separate corporate status and to continue to act in the role as region Steering Committee until a new governance structure can be put in place.  We also named David Naugler as the region's representative on the CCSC Board until the regular election cycle in 2006.As many of you remember, we operated our first conference in 2003 as CCSC Mid-South.  However, CCSC was facing some growing pains and having some internal discussions on its evolving identity.  So we were not extended an invitation to continue as a region at that time.  The 2003 steering committee decided to continue to operate as MSCCC and to meet at UALR in 2004.  We incorporated as a nonprofit, public benefit corporation in Arkansas and applied for cooperation status with ACM SIGCSE.  We were planning to continue operation as MSCCC for 2005 and beyond. There are pros and cons of the merger.  But, after discussion, the Board members felt it was to the benefit of the conference and computing education in the region to rejoin CCSC.  The primary benefits are the financial backing of CCSC's reserves, the services that CCSC provides centrally for all regions, and the publication in the CCSC journal.  The cons have to do with the loss of independence and the loss of absolute control over any "profits" from the conference. - Conrad Cunningham, Conference Chair, MSCCC 2005 (CCSC Mid-South 2005) Conrad announced the Board’s decision to the conference mailing list and all the assets of the MSCCC were transferred to CCSC and the Arkansas corporation was dissolved From: "William Myers" <myers@crusader.bac.edu> To: "William Mitchell" <willmitchell@acm.org> Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 10:00 PM Subject: Check from UM  Today I received a check for $7050.59 for the close out of the MidSouth account. I will be reporting this on the 2005-06 tax return. William Myers TreasurerConsortium for Computing Sciences in CollegesBelmont Abbey College

15. Five Years of the MidSouth Conference 151 sessions presented by 175 contributors

16. Faculty Attendees

17. My perspective on the current role of the CCSC in computing education The regional conferences serve a geographic need and there is potential for more. The Journal serves the role I started it for—to give an outlet to pedagogically-focused papers that relate to undergraduate education. Five years of the Journal is public in the ACM Digital Library. We would like to get all the back issues in. The Board is seriously considering distributing the Journal on CD with on the proceedings being printed. We have to determine if we can continue to grow as a strictly volunteer organization (technology and decentralization have supported us so far) We need to be looking for opportunities to change to meet the needs of a changing faculty.

18. Musings on possible futures I have been involved in creating a high tech college in Arkansas and have written about different flavors of undergraduate computing. The problem with diversity is lack of assessment and accountability. I am in favor of professional accreditation and especially the reasonably way ABET is approaching the problem. Small programs have more choices but must work harder to present coherent curricula that instill a long-term worldview. Curricula should be tied to standard models that have face-validity by engendering a collection of skills that are recognized as useful for solving problems in today’s environment and the foreseeable future. We are soon to be facing another faculty crisis because of the difficulty everyone has in staying current. If you just learn from textbooks, you will find a new edition suddenly will be quite different from the old (the object paradigm change will continue to occur). http://faculty.ivytech.edu/~wmitchel