ACM UTD Named Top Chapter for School Service

Recently, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) student chapter at The University of Texas at Dallas (ACM UTD) was recognized as the top ACM chapter for school service in 2023 and was awarded the 2022-2023 ACM Student Chapter Excellence Award for “Outstanding School Service.” Out of approximately 700 ACM student chapters worldwide, ACM UTD was selected by a panel of ACM judges for its four semester-long programs hosted each semester at UTD: ACM Projects, ACM Research, ACM Technical Interview Prep and ACM Mentor Program. These programs engage over 300 UT Dallas students each semester and give students relevant experience in software development, research, college and career mentorship, and technical interview practice.

UTD’s ACM chapter has significantly expanded in the last ten years under the guidance of the faculty sponsor, Dr. John Cole. All ACM UTD programs are run by UT Dallas students, with strong guidance from Cole and significant support from the UT Dallas Department of Computer Science. Since its inception, the ACM UTD student chapter has rapidly grown to become the largest student organization on campus, with over 100 officers and 900 members. This is the first time that ACM UTD has been internationally recognized for its accomplishments with the ACM Student Chapter Excellence award.

ACM UTD also conducts an outreach program that includes organizing workshops and hackathons at local elementary, middle and high schools. HackUTD is the rapidly growing, largest hackathon in Texas. Additionally, the outreach program includes frequent industry events with corporate sponsors, a student Media team and an open-source software development team called ACM Development, none of which would have been possible without Cole’s tireless engagement. ACM UTD looks forward to welcoming the incoming class of 2027 and hopes to continue and grow these programs to promote a greater, more collaborative computing community at UTD.

“For so long, we have been striving to make a deep and lasting impact locally, regionally and nationally through continuous improvement of our academic standards, empowering student groups and unparalleled outreach to our local community. These efforts are paying off not only with an increase in the number of students we attract each year and our top-ranked incoming students, but also with more national level recognition,” noted Dr. Ovidiu Daescu, head of the Department of Computer Science.

The current officer team of ACM UTD is proud to accept this award and has extended heartfelt thanks to Cole for his tireless contributions to ACM and to the department for its support. They also acknowledge past ACM UTD officer alumni who created a solid foundation for ACM UTD and began the programs that continue today.

ACM Excellence Awards winners can be viewed on the ACM website.

Here are some links to learn more about ACM UTD and our initiatives:

ABOUT THE UT DALLAS COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 4,000 bachelors-degree students, more than 1,010 master’s students, 140 Ph.D. students, 52 tenure-track faculty members, and 42 full-time senior lecturers, as of Fall 2022. With the University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.