Welcome to the final issue of Inroads for 2023 which is a bumper issue with lots of interesting reading for over the holiday season. For our cover, we have selected a cybersecurity and data theme, as several articles in this issue deal with aspects of these topics, important now and well into the future. Our columnists have included inspiring interviews with key computing academics that provide much detail about diversity and inclusion, equity, and accessibility processes. Our authors have provided interesting insights into computing programs in Israel, and sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to discussions of US data and information from various universities and interviews with important people in these universities, and, as always, our puzzler has provided an intriguing puzzle.

Raymond Greenlaw and Kauna Mufeti explain how and why they created a two-year Associate program in cybersecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. Relying on the ABET program criteria for cybersecurity, they systematically worked through the existing Bachelor of CS programs identifying key requirements for the African context to recommend appropriate deliverables to meet the cybersecurity criteria. Their steps help explain the requirements designed and decisions made, in a way which could guide others to implement and/or evaluate a similar associate program.

The data referred to in the introduction to this Editorial and on the cover of this issue has been provided by the ACM Education Board's Actionable Enrollment and Retention (ACER) Task Force. Jodi L. Tims, Cindy S. Tucker, Mark A. Weiss, and Stuart H. Zweben have interpreted this data for us and analyzed it to answer many questions arising from the time during COVID. Some questions answered include what happened with US undergraduate enrollment and retention in the 2021-22 academic year, the first post-COVID enrollment cohort, and what are the five-year trends on enrollments, degree completions, and retention. The report separately considers those bachelor's programs at non-doctoral granting institutions, providing retention data for these institutions for the first time while incorporating enrollment and completion data that formerly appeared in the ACM NDC Study.

David Bunde, Zack Butler, Christopher Tovey, and Cynthia Taylor have written up a very interesting interview with Carl Haynes-Magyar, developer of Codespec and Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Carl explains the ideas behind Codespec, a computer programming environment built on IDEAS+: inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, sexual orientation and gender identity awareness, and justice. Codespec scaffolds learners' programming skills development through a range of research-based problem types and learning support features. Carl also conducts research on tools and processes that support learners' development of self-regulated learning skills demonstrating true prominent propagator traits.

In their article about technology trends in Israeli schools, Doran Zohar and Judith Gal-Ezer explain how an increasing number of university graduates have been seeking senior positions in high-tech companies, attracted by the status, occupational satisfaction, and financial success these companies project. Over the past decade, the Israeli Ministry of Education, as well as teachers and parents, have encouraged this trend, by offering mathematical and computing courses to prepare school students for university-level courses, with the goal of eventually achieving high-tech positions. The authors explain how the success of future generations, in Israel and worldwide, in the field of computing and its interface with other disciplines will benefit the individual, as well as safeguard the country's economy and security, and how pathway this could apply to other countries in the future.

Megan Maley, Brett Becker, and Daniel Gallagher bring the second column of Computing Crossroads featuring vignettes with two prominent members of our computing education research community. We meet Marian Petre, well-known to computer science education researchers for her book and her research around cognitive dimensions of notation moving from software design to professional practice, and Charles Wallace who researches the linguistics of the communication around understanding, building, and using software. Both research at the crossroads of how people understand, explain, and conduct software development.

Taking up on the theme of diversity, we feature a new column from Tamara Pearson and Pamela Leggett-Robinson called "Notes from the Margins." Here they explain their background, the reason behind their column and their aim to deep dive into one focus question each time. These questions will range from computing-focused, research-driven questions to others that interrogate society and justice more broadly and provide very interesting perspectives.

Our regular columnist Henry Walker discusses how the teaching of binary representation of numbers can result in payoffs for students planning careers related to programming and software development. Traditionally, undergraduate computing curricula have included discussion of the binary representation of numbers (and other data types), but these concepts may be covered in a discrete mathematics course or in various areas of the curriculum where the importance for software is not stressed. Henry considers how the binary representation of numbers can impact program behavior and correctness in many ways and gives numerous examples. As usual, Henry's discussions may have numerous foci and applications, but it is always interesting to reflect on the underlying mathematical properties of the data and implications for software development.

One of Gary Wong's favourite topics is Blockchain, and he has provided several articles for Inroads on this theme. In this issue, his article is about the value Blockchain can provide for education, as he presents his new perspective around a "learn-to-earn" model. This shows how Blockchain could be used in the educational administration context, and the possible future research directions in educational research that may be foreseen. His recommendation is for educational administers and management to explore with educators how students can and do benefit from the Blockchain technology behind their teaching and learning.

Juan Gutierrez writes about the issues surrounding big data being collected and analysed in all domains, resulting in a need for programming and data science courses to be delivered to non-STEM students. His first recommendation is for such a course to encompass topics that are sufficiently flexible for adaption to the non-STEM discipline and not specific to any specific programming language. Additionally, the course should be designed to be delivered within a limited timeframe, such as a single academic term. He outlines an introductory programming course, comprising a selection of topics intended to provide non-Computer Science students with a foundational understanding of programming concepts applicable to the implementation of general Data Science solutions.

In the first issue next year, we are planning a very special edition, based around the CS2023 Curriculum and how CS departments internationally are positioned to accept and adapt the new directions. One of our regular authors, Mikey Goldweber, who has been involved with this CS2023 curriculum process since the beginning, gives us an overview in this current issue in 3.5 short points! Approximately every ten years the ACM, in conjunction with the IEEE Computer Society, and, most recently, with the AAAI as well, review computing curricula. In his piece, Mikey provides an interesting insight into the process of publishing the report outlining the recommended undergraduate curriculum for computer science degrees. He takes us through defining competent programmers, the current understanding of mental models and graduate requirements for society, ethics, and professionalism among other important features of the new curriculum.

We would like to thank all our article writers, columnists, reviewers, and editors for their valuable contributions over this past year, and we look forward to many more in 2024.

Margaret Hamilton and James Harland
Editors-in-Chief

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