Emeritus Professor Cary Laxer Getting Computer Science Education Lifetime Service Award
Friday, January 08, 2021
The Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education is honoring Cary Laxer, who was a professor from 1981-2017 and led the computer science and software engineering department from 2002-15.
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology emeritus professor and former computer science and software engineering (CSSE) department head Cary Laxer is being recognized by his international peers for his lifetime of service to computer science education. He will be honored March 13-20 at SIGCSE 2021, the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education’s virtual conference.
For the past 25 years, Laxer has played a key role in the SIGCSE conference as a volunteer who has helped oversee the annual event’s registration procedures. His service on the committee will end with this year’s conference. He also has attended nearly every SIGCSE conference since the late 1980s and made several technical presentations throughout the years with students, department faculty colleagues, and scholars from throughout the world.
Laxer helped pave the way for enormous change within computer science education – at Rose-Hulman and across the country. Under his leadership as department chair from 2002-15, CSSE grew in student enrollment and faculty stature, moved into renovated office and laboratory spaces in the campus’s largest academic building, Moench Hall, and added an emphasis in software engineering. The department also added an academic major in international computer science. This is a dual degree program with Germany’s Ulm University of Applied Sciences/Technische Hochschule Ulm.
He also helped enhance computer science programs at other colleges and universities as a computer science program evaluator for the ABET accreditation organization. He also served as a computer science education consultant.
Laxer joined the Rose-Hulman faculty in 1981 after earning his doctorate from Duke University in 1980 and a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1976. He retired from full-time teaching in 2017 and remained as a part-time instructor until 2019. During his faculty tenure, Laxer earned the Dean’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 1986 and was given honorary alumni status by the Rose-Hulman Alumni Association in 2002.
The SIGCSE organization provides a forum for educators to discuss issues related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of computing programs, curricula and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories and other elements of teaching and educational development.
For the past 25 years, Laxer has played a key role in the SIGCSE conference as a volunteer who has helped oversee the annual event’s registration procedures. His service on the committee will end with this year’s conference. He also has attended nearly every SIGCSE conference since the late 1980s and made several technical presentations throughout the years with students, department faculty colleagues, and scholars from throughout the world.
Laxer helped pave the way for enormous change within computer science education – at Rose-Hulman and across the country. Under his leadership as department chair from 2002-15, CSSE grew in student enrollment and faculty stature, moved into renovated office and laboratory spaces in the campus’s largest academic building, Moench Hall, and added an emphasis in software engineering. The department also added an academic major in international computer science. This is a dual degree program with Germany’s Ulm University of Applied Sciences/Technische Hochschule Ulm.
He also helped enhance computer science programs at other colleges and universities as a computer science program evaluator for the ABET accreditation organization. He also served as a computer science education consultant.
Laxer joined the Rose-Hulman faculty in 1981 after earning his doctorate from Duke University in 1980 and a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1976. He retired from full-time teaching in 2017 and remained as a part-time instructor until 2019. During his faculty tenure, Laxer earned the Dean’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 1986 and was given honorary alumni status by the Rose-Hulman Alumni Association in 2002.
The SIGCSE organization provides a forum for educators to discuss issues related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of computing programs, curricula and courses, as well as syllabi, laboratories and other elements of teaching and educational development.