CIS Professor Recognized by ACM President Award
UO professor Jan Cuny is the recipient of a 2005 ACM President Award which recognizes "leaders of IT whose actions and achievements serve as paragons for our field." Prof. Cuny is being recognized for "showing us how to help underserved populations as a computer scientist, a parent, a teacher, a civil servant, and a citizen."
The award recognizes Professor Cuny's long record of leadership and service on the Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research. Cuny was active in several key CRA-W programs, including an influential series of mentorship workshops for female researchers in academic careers as well as the Distributed Mentor Project, which sponsored summer research experiences for undergraduate women. She was a co-creator of the very successful Grad Cohort and Cohort for Associate Professors Project (CAPP) programs. In 2004, Prof. Cuny represented CRA-W in accepting the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from President George Bush for "significant achievements in mentoring women across educational levels." She was also Program Chair of the 2004 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and will serve as General Chair of the 2006 Conference. Prof. Cuny was also a member of the Leadership Team of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT).
In 2005, Prof. Cuny took a leave from the University of Oregon to serve at the National Science Foundation as the Program Director of the new CISE Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) initiative. The BPC initiative aims to increase the number of students receiving undergraduate and graduate awards in computing. Initially this program focuses on groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in the computing fields: women, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Indigenous Peoples, and persons with disabilities.
In the citation for the ACM President Award, Prof. Cuny was also recognized as the parent of three adopted minority children and as the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for several children in Oregon's foster care system. She and her husband currently tutor children in the Washington D.C. school system.