Donald Gotterbarn

Dept. of Computer Science
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, TN 37614
Phone:  (423)439-6849
Email:  gotterba@etsu.edu


Biographical Information

Don worked as a computer consultant on software systems for the U.S. Navy and for the Saudi Arabian Navy. He has also worked on the certification of software for vote counting machines and missile defense systems. He is the director of the Software Engineering Ethics Research Institute at East Tennessee State University and teaches, software engineering, software project management and computer ethics. He is also a visiting professor at universities in England, Australia, and New Zealand. He has published over 100 articles, contributed to more than a dozen books and written several encyclopedia articles. He chaired the committee that wrote the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice. His technical work includes funded research on performance prediction for a distributed Ada closure, object-oriented testing, and software engineering education and computer ethics. He was recently awarded the "Making a Difference" award by the ACM special interest group on Computing and Society for his work in promoting professionalism in the teaching and practice of software development.

Suggested Lecture Topics

Unmanaged Risk: Why Systems Don't Work

The focus on software testing and risk analysis during software development has only had a limited effect in reducing software failures. This talk will present a new approach to the identification of software risk and reduce the rate of system failures. The process and types of risks will be illustrated with international projects on e-voting, medical software, and data warehousing.

Software development: more than just programming

We are often surprised by the number of non-programming related issues that affect the professional's efforts to develop quality software and web interfaces. Development efforts are constrained in a number of positive and negative ways. This talk address some of those current issues including software standards, licensing of software developers, issues of malpractice and liability for unanticipated software errors, and professional and ethical issues.

Computer Ethics and Technology

This talk focuses on computer ethics as it relates to the day to day activities of practicing computer professionals. The emphasis is on real world moral and legal issues for the practicing computer professionals and with a focus on how one resolves these issues.

Additional Information

Power point will be used in these presentations.


Association for Computing Machinery Technology Outreach Program
Last modified: Aug 23, 2005