Lawrence G. Jones Elected First Computing President of ABET

Baltimore, MD – At its spring meeting last weekend, the ABET Board of Directors elected Lawrence G. Jones, Ph.D., to be its 2015-16 President. Jones is currently a member of the board representing CSAB, Inc., the lead society within ABET for accreditation of degree programs in computer science, information systems, software engineering, and information technology. Jones will be ABET’s first President with an educational and professional background in computer science and software engineering and the first to come through CSAB. CSAB became a member society of ABET in 2001. There are currently more than 30 such members of ABET representing dozens of technical disciplines and millions who work in those fields. More than 3,600 programs in 25 countries are accredited by the organization.

“I am honored to have been elected to this position,” says Jones. “Computing is an integral component of ABET now, thanks in large part to the hard work of the many CSAB volunteers who came before me. This election is proof of that. And I look forward,” Jones continues, “to the opportunity to lead ABET’s fantastic and diverse cadre of volunteers and staff and to continue to contribute to its culture of quality improvement in both its own operations and in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology education.”

Jones began his accreditation activities as a CSAB program evaluator in 1989. Since then, he has served as a member of the CSAB Board of Directors, representing the Association of Computing Machinery, and as the Secretary-Treasurer of the organization. Within ABET, Jones has served as Chair of the Computing Accreditation Commission and as Chair of ABET’s Accreditation Council, where he led the efforts to improve inter-commission cooperation leading to harmonization of accreditation criteria and improved training of evaluators. Most recently, he led ABET’s Strategic Planning Task Force. He is a Fellow of both CSAB and ABET.

Jones earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University. Recently retired as Distinguished Principal Researcher at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University, Jones led numerous research projects for the institute spanning software architecture, software product lines, and government and industry consulting to support SEI’s technology transition mission. Prior to joining the SEI, Jones spent a career in the United States Air Force in a variety of software development and management positions, ultimately retiring as the Chair of the Computer Science Department at the United States Air Force Academy.

CSAB, Inc., a federation of the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, serves as a participating body of ABET, Inc., with three members on the ABET Board of Directors. CSAB is the lead society within ABET for accreditation of programs in computer science, information systems, software engineering, and information technology, and is a cooperating society for accreditation of computer engineering, biological engineering, systems engineering, and information engineering technology. In this capacity, CSAB has responsibility for the development of accreditation criteria and for the selection, training, and assignment of program evaluators.