Brief Biographical Sketch

Robert L. Glass
Computing Trends
1416 Sare Rd.
Bloomington IN 47401
(812)337-8047 (voice/fax)
rlglass@acm.org

Robert L. Glass is president of Computing Trends, publishers of The Software Practitioner. He has been active in the field of computing and software for over 45 years, largely in industry (1954-1982 and 1988-present), but also as an academic (1982-1988). He is the author of 25 books and over 70 papers on computing subjects, Editor of The Software Practitioner, Editor Emeritus of Elsevier's Journal of Systems and Software, and a columnist for several periodicals including Communications of the ACM (the "Practical Programmer" column), IEEE Software ('The Loyal Opposition'), and ACM's SIGMIS DataBase ('Through a Glass, Darkly'). He was for 15 years a Lecturer for the ACM, and was named a Fellow of the ACM in 1998. He received an honorary Ph.D. from Linkoping University in Sweden in 1995. He describes himself by saying "my head is in the theory of computing, but my heart is in its practice."

Brief Rationale for Serving on Butler Software Engineering Advisory Board

I am pleased and proud to be a member of Butler's Software Engineering Advisory Board. There are two primary reasons for that:

1. I am a deep believer in the academic and practitioner world of software engineering. I spent most of my career building software or doing research about building software or teaching about building software, starting at the very beginning of the field. I cannot imagine a more satisfying career. Software engineers actually build products with their minds, not their hands. Making it possible for computer hardware to solve very real problems is a thrill I cannot describe to those who have never experienced it. And software engineering is the proper academic background for getting that thrill. The related discipline of computer science is also interesting, but its focus on theory, and its absence of a commitment to evaluating that theory, means that computer science is not a powerful platform from which to launch a career in software construction.

2. I think Butler is a cool place to pursue a professional career. It's not just that it's a campus with wonderful architecture, or pleasant grounds, or people you can come to care about. It's not just that it's a place that has chosen to take the risk of making software engineering an undergraduate degree program, as few other universities in the world have done. It's not just that it blends liberal arts with technical degree programs such as software engineering, to produce graduates who are whole and well-rounded individuals. It's the synergistic combination of all of those wonderful things!