Alison Clear is honoured for a lifetime of service to computer science education.

It is with great pleasure that EIT’s School of Computing can announce that Associate Professor Alison Clear from the Auckland campus will receive the 2020 SIGCSE Lifetime Service Award. The Special Interest Group on Computer Education (SIGCSE) recognised Alison for a lifetime of volunteer service to computer science education. 

The award will be presented at the annual SIGCSE Technical Symposium held in Portland, Oregon (USA) in March 2020. It’s the largest computing education conference in the world with over 1500 attendees. 

“I’m very honoured and humbled that my colleagues did nominate and choose me,” says Alison. Alison is also the first award winner from Oceania and only the third outside of the US. 

She was the Head of the School of Computing at UNITEC for 12 years before taking up the Head of Department role at ARA Institute of Canterbury. She has been at EIT’s Auckland campus since the introduction of the Master of Information Technology in 2014, making her mark as programme director and lecturer.  

“In my career I was looking after staff and students as well as getting involved outside the academic institution by building relationships with industry and staying up-to-date with the latest trends in the sector,” Alison says. 

From 1988 onwards Alison has also been a member of the National Advisory Committee for Computing Qualifications (NACCQ) which – in 2010 – became Computing and Information Technology Research and Education in New Zealand (CITRENZ). In her role Alison helped set up a large array of curricula for computing qualifications in the ITP sector.  

Alison is internationally recognised, she has chaired over 30 international conferences and published over 100 refereed papers. Currently Alison is leading a global project “Computing Curriculum 2020” which aims to develop international computing curriculum guidelines.