Service & Leadership

Outside of the JMU CS department, I have held a number of leadership positions in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and JMU's Center for Faculty Innovation (CFI), both of which are described here. These activities have focused on efforts supporting research & publication integrity, ethics & professional conduct in computing, and learner-centered teaching approaches (in computing and beyond). Other service activities are listed in my CV.

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is an international scholarly society for computer science with more than 100,000 members. ACM is a member-driven and volunteer-led society that hosts 170 conferences, symposia, and workshops and publishes almost 100 proceedings and over 50 journals each year.

ACM Ethics & Plagiarism Committee (E&P)

ACM Publications Board (Pubs Board) defines the policies and procedures that apply to all ACM publications and oversees the operation of all ACM journals. Members of Pubs Board also manage a number of society-wide resources, including the ACM Digital Library and publishing the flagship Communications of the ACM magazine. The Pubs Board also led the transition to ACM Open, switching ACM to a fully Open Access (OA) publishing model.

I serve on the Pubs Board as the Co-chair of the Ethics & Plagiarism Committee (E & P). E & P is responsible for investigating and adjudicating accusations of violations of all of Publications Policies. These violations range from plagiarism to peer review manipulation to paper mills and collusion rings.

Given my involvement with ACM's investigation of publication integrity violations, I have also been selected as Chair of the CLEAR Task Force on Publication and Scientific Ethics. This task force has brought together representatives of other major computing research societies, including Computing Research Association (CRA), IEEE Computer Society, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), USENIX, and Informatics Europe. This task force is tasked with documenting the types and causes of unethical behavior in scientific research and publication practices in computing, as well as recommending steps that our societies can take to stop such misconduct.

I have served on the Pubs Board and E & P since 2018 in the following roles:

  • Co-chair of E & P (July 2026 - present)
  • Member of ACM Presidential Task Force on Alignment of Ethics Policy (May 2026 - present)
  • Chair of CLEAR Task Force (March 2026 - present)
  • Chair of E & P (July 2022 - June 2026)
  • Member of Pubs Board (July 2022 - present)
  • Vice Chair of E & P (March 2022 - June 2022)
  • Member (ex officio) as representative from ACM COPE (2018 - 2022)
  • Member of ACM-IEEE Joint Investigative Committee (JIC) investigating peer review breach at 2019 ISCA conference

ACM Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE)

ACM COPE is responsible for promoting ethical conduct among computing professionals. Since 2017, I have served as an officer (Education Coordinator) for COPE. It was in that role that I was first appointed to serve as a member (ex officio) of E & P. I have also been a member of multiple ad hoc committees to investigate complaints made under the Enforcement Procedures for the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

I joined COPE as a member of the Executive Committee for the Code 2018 Project. This project updated the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct for the first time since the 1992 version. My contributions to this project included rewriting the guidance language for the Principles, incorporating feedback collected from thousands of ACM members.

In addition, I have made other contributions to COPE and served in a variety of roles:

  • Co-facilitator: "Reinvigorating a Culture of Curiosity and Learning in Computer Science Education," SIGCSE 2026
  • Co-author and presenter: "From the Page to Practice: Support for Computing Professionals Using a Code of Ethics," ETHICOMP 2022
  • Author and presenter: "Free Speech and Computing Professionals: Moral Considerations and Tensions," ETHICOMP 2022
  • Author of ACM Case Studies
  • Co-author of ACM Code Booklet
  • Co-facilitator: "Using the ACM Code of Ethics in Technical Computing Topics," SIGCSE 2019
  • Co-facilitator: "ACM Code of Ethics: Looking Back and Forging Ahead," SIGCSE 2019
  • Invited Panelist: "Ethical Considerations for New Technologies: The Impact of AI and Technology on Human Operators," Jones Day/ACM Washington, D.C.
  • Co-facilitator: "Strategies for Integrating the Updated ACM Code of Ethics into the Computing Curriculum," SIGCSE 2018 [Github Repository]
  • Co-facilitator: "Strategies for Integrating Driverless Cars into the Computing Curricula," SIGCSE 2017 [Sample exercise: Keynote | PPT | PDF]
  • Web administrator for ACM COPE (now moved to ACM's web domain)

JMU Center for Faculty Innovation (CFI)

The CFI is a community of JMU faculty and educational developers collaborating to create opportunities for professional growth and innovation. I am currently a Faculty Affiliate within the Teaching Area of the CFI, serving as a Faculty Associate from 2017 - 2020.

My primary interests while at the CFI focused on applying ideas from cognitive science and psychology to improve student learning. If you talk to me long enough about this, you'll probably hear about any of the following topics:

  • Active learning and collaborative learning
  • Cognitive load theory
  • Formative assessment
  • Metacognition
  • Peer Instruction
  • Specifications grading

My activities with the CFI have included the following: