The American University in Bulgaria ACM Student Chapter, also known throughout the University as the Computer Science Student Union or just as CSSU, is a students' organization of the Computer Science Department founded on Jan 25, 2006 and chartered by ACM on Feb 05, 2008. Our mission is to foster a sense of community and belonging among students of computer science, to allow them to build up their skills, and reach out to the computer science community outside of the university.

The American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) is a private liberal arts institution committed to educate future leaders for the Balkans region by promoting American-style educational values and mores. The chapter’s members are university students - currently 103 - and most of them study Computer Science as their first major. We have a lot of members that do a second major in Business Administration, Mathematics or Economics too. This year there were about 180 students in total that pursue a degree in Computer Science at AUBG.

The 2007/2008 academic year was very successful for CSSU. We had a great variety of high quality events every week. The Wednesday CSSU seminars have turned into a tradition in our University and every Computer Science student knows that Wednesday, 7PM is CSSU time. During the spring semester we became the AUBG ACM Chapter and hardly had weeks with less than two presentations or workshops.

The most significant part of the chapter’s activities is the one with the student presentations. Throughout the academic year there were 11 topics presented by members of the chapter. The topics varied from Game Development and Database Modeling to Cryptography and User Experience. There were introductory presentations to Python, Ruby on Rails, High Level Shared Language and AJAX. Those were accompanied by easy to grasp examples of code. These events were in coherence with the idea of promoting further research on different Computer Science topics by the chapter members. For more information on the presentations visit our website.

There were also Computer Science University Exchanges and Internships Discussions Seminars. In two consecutive sessions the students shared experience from their activities outside AUBG. On our first event for the academic year the students talked about their summer internships in Bulgaria and Europe, how AUBG courses helped them to complete their tasks, the benefits of having professional experience, etc. People who attended international IT conferences shared their insight too. In a week time the Erasmus Student Exchange Program participants talked about universities they had explored, different courses and style of education, new opportunities for development and interesting sightseeing. These two sessions were used as a tool to get the first-year students involved in the Computer Science major and to encourage them to pursue their degree in the field.

Our most attended presentation this year was titled “Look beyond the future of technology” and was delivered by our guests from SAP Labs Bulgaria. More than 130 people gathered in the AUBG auditorium to hear the talk of the well-known software company. Our guests focused on the latest and hottest topics in the IT - from development and use of ERP to legal issues in the software industry and customer support. The AUBG Student Government sponsored us for the advertising campaign and Telerik Corp. provided us with funding to arrange a cocktail after the presentation, which gave a chance to the participants to meet SAP representatives. There were several other presentations throughout the year by guest companies.

The flagship activity of the AUBG ACM Student Chapter so far has been its weekly presentation seminars. However, recently our activities have expanded to include development and management of programming projects. Those are developed by our members for educational purposes or sometimes just for the sake of programming. Participating in a CSSU project provides experience, resources and help from other members and officers. More information about the initiative could be found on our website under the projects section.

In addition to the projects initiative, workshops are increasingly more demanded. Those are practical sessions that aim to build specific skills in fields not covered by the AUBG Computer Science curriculum with the help of more experienced students. The recent workshops included technologies like WPF and Silverlight. We also had workshops on hardware and graphic design and the first ones were focused on algorithms. At the hardware event participants were assembling and disassembling computers. They also saw an authentic “Pravets-82/IMKO” computer which is the first ever made in Bulgaria, manufactured in the town of Pravets. It was really exciting to see the Apple II clone that operates with the remarkable 48 Kb of RAM memory and a processor with 1Mhz frequency.

Among all those activities we should not omit the Annual AUBG Computer Science Competition. Originally started by AUBG professors and since the inception of CSSU continued by us, the competition was held in the spring for twelfth time. The students received three algorithmic problems to solve. For a first time there were two groups - one for beginners and one for advanced. The competition was organized with the help of the Computer Science Faculty who provided the participants with the problems and ran the tests for the solutions. The event was kindly supported by the Student Government which provided enough money so that every participant gets a book. About 20 students participated in the competition, as the first three in the ranking were invited for the National University Student Olympiad in Bulgaria.

Computer Science is not only about coding. The chapter often organizes non-academic events where the members could meet in an informal setting to get to know each other. Those events are great opportunity to find people with similar interests, meet partners to do projects with, get feedback about your latest ideas or just have fun with your mates. The social events organized by the chapter this year included a picnic at a great outdoor spot not too far away from the campus and several movie nights where we watched movies about computer programmers. We also had dinners with our Computer Science faculty. Those were great opportunity to find out more about the exciting personalities of those brilliant people.

Our second anniversary took place shortly before the Union became an ACM Student Chapter. All officers, most of the members, the University administration and faculty gathered together to commemorate the second birthday of the organization. We had a formal cocktail, a few speeches, balloons, party decorations all over the event venue. Funny pranks such as transforming the main university building’s stairs into a keyboard announced the event a few days before. You could read posters with computer science humor everywhere on campus. There were spots where you can watch CSSU movies and get a glimpse of how fun being a member is. A lot of people participated in the organization and that definitely strengthened the bonds of friendship among us.

One of the newest activities of the chapter is organizing field trips. Those are visits to the offices of software companies for a day to see firsthand how the business works. During the spring semester we visited Telerik. The trip was a jointly-organized by CSSU, Telerik and AUBG Career Center which sponsored the chapter with the travel expenses. The students toured different departments of the firm, talked with some of the employees regarding what a typical day in the office is like, and attended a presentation about how to make a profitable business in a small country like Bulgaria by the CEO of the company.

Being a member of the AUBG ACM Student Chapter is a very exciting experience. Students on campus are often seen wearing one of our several custom-designed T-shirts or hats. We make new ones several times a year with the help of our sponsors: Telerik Corp. and Microsoft Bulgaria. Most of those gears are distinctive and the members wear them with pride. Some of the members participate in the design too.

Another distinctive mark of the chapter is the way we advertise our events. Every week we find talented designers to create posters resembling the topics of the seminars, giving them opportunity to show their talent. We print the posters in very high quality, thanks to the Student Government of AUBG that provides us with funding. The activity of finding the right people, creating the poster on a technical topic and then distributing the product on time is very challenging and the people involved in it get valuable skills and experience.

The organization of all those activities has been a significant effort, but extremely rewarding one. The officers gained valuable organizing skills backed by the countless officer meetings and discussions, meetings with AUBG administration and representatives of the business outside the university. Along with the other members they acquired knowledge and experience that at the same time satisfies and agitates the thirst for advancement and also had lots of fun.