Essential practical connections between the disciplines of IS and CS

connections between the Disciplines of IS and CS design, IS project management, enterprise architecture, user experience, and professional issues in information systems as those topics in the IS curriculum that have been and continue to be developed within the IS discipline. Areas such as programming fundamentals, algorithms and complexity , IT infrastructure, and operating systems, however, are clearly identified to be outside the core area of IS expertise. The practical consequences of acknowledging this distinction are broad. First, it means that IS faculty members IS 2010 made explIcIt one of the challenges of the information systems (IS) discipline: Significant elements of the undergraduate IS curriculum are based on expertise that has not been created and is not developed further within the discipline. Earlier, this was recognized to be the case for domain fundamentals (such as various business disciplines) and foun-dational knowledge and skills (including leadership and collaboration, communication , negotiation, analytical and critical thinking, and mathematical foundations). IS 2010, however, makes it explicit that many IS programs include in their core technical computing content that is based on expertise created primarily by computer scientists and computer engineers and maintained in the curricula and bodies of knowledge of these fields, respectively. Why do I believe it is important enough to highlight this in an ACM Inroads column and bring it to your attention again? The topic was, after all, discussed from a slightly different perspective already in my June 2010 column? It is important because the issue is closely linked to the ongoing discussion regarding the identity of the IS discipline and the primary value that it adds to the broader field of computing. The IS 2010 process identified IS management and leadership, data and information management, systems analysis and teaching in the areas outside the core knowledge creation domain of IS should follow closely the relevant areas in computer science research and pedagogy as part of their professional development. For example, it is clear that the computer science education community represents the latest pedagogical understanding related to teaching of programming languages , data structures, and algorithms. The core expertise required for teaching the fundamentals of these topics is the same regardless of the context in which the material is taught. IS faculty members teaching in these areas should take advantage of the strong computer science education tradition represented in areas such as the SIGCSE community, ACM publications related to computing …