| Sumario: | Welcome to the 50th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (the 2019 Symposium), the premiere technical conference for computer science educators. The 2019 Symposium is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). SIGCSE has the third largest membership of any of ACM's Special Interest Groups (SIG), and is among the oldest SIGs. Only ten SIGs were founded prior to 1968 when SIGCSE was formed, and two other SIGs shared their 50th anniversary in 2018 with SIGCSE. The SIGCSE Board and many other SIGCSE volunteers celebrated the 50th anniversary last year, but I would like to give a special thanks to two people. Briana Morrison, who is on the SIGCSE Board, created a series of weekly postings about SIGCSE's anniversary. These postings were shared on the listserv and published on SIGCSE's web site, and I know that many of you, myself included, enjoyed them. I would also like to thank Jane Prey, who is a long-time SIGCSE volunteer and previous SIGCSE award winner, for her work as the guest editor of a special issue of ACM Inroads celebrating SIGCSE's anniversary. However, the celebration for the SIG is far from over. This year marks the 50th Technical Symposium, an achievement that even fewer SIGs share, as only six ACM SIGs have conferences that have been held 50 or more times. Further, the SIGCSE Symposium is thriving. The past several years have seen large increases in attendance at the conference, and this year will be even better thanks in part to the 50th anniversary committee. Adrienne Decker, who is a SIGCSE Board member and chairing the committee, Carl Alphonce, and Kurt Eiselt have worked for more than a year to put together a series of special events at the 50th Symposium. There will be a track focused on anniversary content that includes peer-reviewed papers and panels and invited discussants. Previous conference co-chairs have been invited to attend the conference and will be recognized for their work. The Travel Grant program has been expanded to 50 people for the anniversary, which should bring a new group of educators to our community. There will be special ribbons, stickers, and mementos for all attendees, and there will be a 50th anniversary booth and signage throughout the conference providing information about the conference history. Finally, the committee has worked with a historian, the Charles Babbage Institute, and Computing Educator's Oral History Project to bring content to attendees and have attendees contribute to the organizations' initiatives. On behalf of the SIGCSE Board I would like to thank the 50th anniversary committee for all of their hard work Of course, none of the activities at the 2019 Symposium would have been possible without the dedicated effort of conference co-chairs Manuel Pérez-Quinñones and Beth Hawthorne. They have spent countless hours ensuring that the 50th Technical Symposium will an event to remember. They and their committee of nearly 100 people have put together an engaging and innovative program, created opportunities for networking, and handled all the issues big and small that come with a conference of this size. On behalf of the SIGCSE organization and Board, I thank Manuel and Beth for their hard work, innovative ideas, excellent communication, and sense of humor. Along with everything else you can expect to see this year, the conference provides us with a chance to honor two people for their contributions to computer science education and the SIGCSE community. The annual SIGCSE award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education will be given to Mark Guzdial at the University of Michigan. Mark has worked to transform wide-scale teaching practice through contextualized computing education, most notably with the Media Computation curriculum, advocated and supported policy changes supporting computing for all in many states in the U.S., published core research in computing education over decades, and helped to foster the next generation of computing educators through his mentorship. It is difficult to find someone in the SIGCSE community who has not read something written by Mark, including the thousands of regular readers of his long-standing blog on computing education. He has also contributed significantly as an organizer of two SIGCSE conferences and served on the SIGCSE Board. Mark has touched the computing education community and SIGCSE in many ways throughout the years, and our community is better for it. The annual SIGCSE award for Lifetime Service will be given to Gloria Childress Townsend at DePauw University. Gloria has worked tirelessly on behalf of diversity and inclusion in computing. She was a co-founder and co-facilitator of the SIGCSE Committee on Expanding the Women-in-Computing Community, a committee that has led birds-of-a-feather sessions at the Technical Symposium annually since 2005. Gloria worked for decades with ACMW serving on the Executive Board and as ACM-W chair. She conceived of the idea of small regional celebrations of women in computing and worked as a guide and leader for these celebrations as they spread from the United States across the globe. Her extensive service to the computing education community has helped it to reach people who might not have joined without her hard work. Please join me and the rest of the SIGCSE Board in congratulating both of them on their well-deserved awards.
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