CServeS: Computing in Service to Society

CServeS (pronounced "serves") showcases some of the outreach/societal projects and activities that are being developed and implemented in the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.

	Assistive Technology & Accessibility. This class will focus on computer accessibility, including web and desktop computing, and research in the area of assistive technology. Students will be expected to do service work with non-profits serving the local disability community during one to two weekends of the start of the semester. This course (05-899 section J) has a project component, where students will design, implement, and test software for people with disabilities. Contact person: Jen Mankoff, jmankoff @cs.cmu.edu
	The Center for Appalachian Network Access (CANA) is a philanthropic effort based in the School of Computer Science. CANA's mission is assist underserved Appalachian communities acquire and use high speed internet access. CANA has projects in WV and SW PA where we send teams of CS faculity and students to install the network and perform community outreach and education.
	Project LISTEN is developing an automated Reading Tutor that listens to children read aloud. The Reading Tutor adapts Carnegie Mellon's Sphinx-II speech recognizer to analyze the student's oral reading. The Reading Tutor responds with assistance modelled in part after expert reading teachers, but adapted to the capabilities and limitations of the technology. Though not (yet) a commercial product, the Reading Tutor is being used daily at elementary schools to test its effectiveness.
	Ph.D. program in Computation, Organizations and Society (COS) The past decade has seen a tremendous increase in both the breadth and the complexity of computational systems society has come to rely on. This increase in turn is giving rise to a number of new and challenging societal, management and policy issues, which themselves often call for new technological innovations. Examples include digital rights management, social interaction management, data privacy technology, electronic market mechanisms, dynamic social network modeling, etc. Attacking these new problems requires a deep understanding of computation and of the interplay between the managerial, personal and policy networks in which technology operates. The Ph.D. Program in Computation, Organizations and Society (COS) prepares students to be tomorrow's leaders in constructing software that is accountable to society, business, policy, and law. As part of constructing such computational technology, students engage in evaluating and understanding the implications of technology with respect to social, corporate, legal or policy concerns. The result is technology that is easier to adopt and more responsible to the environment in which it operates. The result is an improved understanding the complex socio-technical world that we inhabit.
	Student Technology Exchange Program will bring four students from China to Carnegie Mellon University and send four of our students to China next fall as part of a new exchange program. Would you like to share the knowledge and skills you have learned in the classroom with people in developing communities around the world, and learn from them in exchange? If so, this program is for you. This pilot program is a partnership with Zhe Jiang University. We hope to provide similar opportunities with other universities in other countries soon.
	The TechBridgeWorld initiative aims to facilitate collaborations between Carnegie Mellon University and developing communities around the world to design and implement creative technological solutions that will benefit development. TheTechBridge World seminar series seeks to bring relevant speakers to campus and promote debate and interest among the campus community on the topic of technology for developing communities. A special emphasis is placed on providing opportunities to speakers from developing communities.
Technology Consulting in the Community (TCinC) is a special university-community learning partnership. Carnegie Mellon undergraduate students work with a local non-profit organization to use, manage, plan for, and integrate technology into the organization and its programs.
Technology and Development for 4 Billion (T&D4B) This Readings and Research (Special Topics) course studies meaningful ways of utilizing advanced technologies for development with regard to the world's poorer 4 billion people, people who today lack access to modern technologies and infrastructure. We consider technology to be an enabler of development, and study the intersection of technology, policy, and the business case with an emphasis on sustainable solutions.
	The V-Unit The V-unit enables our students and faculty “to grow a Vision” of what computer science and technology can concretely do for society in non-traditional and under-funded areas. Poverty, the environment, cultural differences, health care, energy are just a few examples of areas of great concern to society in general.
In the works
	The Technology Peace Corps (TPC) is the first program to be launched under the TechBridgeWorld initiative. TPC is an academic program in which students from Carnegie Mellon collaborate with students, researchers, and national-service volunteers in developing communities, under the supervision of both Carnegie Mellon faculty and host-community counterparts.