The evolution of computer software has led to many ethical concerns; however, an ETSU computer science professor is “making a difference” in the computer world across the globe.
Dr. Donald W. Gotterbarn received the “Making A Difference” award, which is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to an individual nationally recognized for work related to the interaction of computers and society.
Recipients of the award are leaders in promoting awareness of ethical and social issues in computing and encourage responsible action by computer professionals.
ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computers and Society chose Gotterbarn because of his efforts and, ultimately, success, in creating a task force that produced a code of ethics eventually approved by both the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. The code is translated or being translated into Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Croatian, Hebrew, French and Japanese, thus creating a worldwide impact. Organizations and companies everywhere with software development interest are adopting the code.
Gotterbarn has been teaching at ETSU for 12 years and currently heads the Software Engineering Ethics Research Institute. In 1971, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester while also working as a computer consultant.
His consulting work included developing software systems for both the United States Navy and the Saudi Arabian Navy, databases, vote-counting software and missile defense systems. Most recently, with support from the National Science Foundation, he and colleagues are developing a CASE tool for discovering and documenting the ethical impact of a software development effort.
Gotterbarn believes his success in combining computing and ethics may be due in part to his combination of scholarly work in philosophy and practical experience in computing. He is an international speaker and has published numerous papers in national and international publications such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Computer, Computers and Society, The Australian Journal of Information Systems and many others.

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