A History of the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium and its Model Curricula KIM B. BRUCE Pomona College ROBERT D. CUPPER Allegheny College and ROBERT L. SCOT DRYSDALE Dartmouth College With the support of a grant from the Sloan Foundation, nine computer scientists from liberal arts colleges came together in October, 1984 to form the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) and to create a model curriculum appropriate for liberal arts colleges. Over the years the membership has grown and changed, but the focus has remained on helping to establish and maintain high quality computer science programs in liberal arts colleges. In this report we discuss briefly the history of the group, the series of three curricula produced by LACS, and other contributions of the members to computer science education. Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.3.2 [Computers and Education]: Computer and Infor- mation Science Education—Curriculum; Computer Science Education General Terms: Standardization Additional Key Words and Phrases: Computing Curriculum Guidelines, LACS, liberal arts 1. HISTORY OF THE LIBERAL ARTS COMPUTER SCIENCE CONSORTIUM The Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) began in 1984 with a small group of dedicated educators from small liberal arts colleges working towards the goal of establishing a clearer definition of what computer science is and leverag- ing that definition into programs viable in the liberal arts landscape. These faculty examined the then current curricula standards as specified in Curriculum ’68 [Atchi- son et al. 1968] and the more recent Curriculum ’78 [Austing et al. 1979] and began looking for a more appropriate computer science curriculum for implementation in small liberal arts colleges. The group sought to capture the essence of the discipline as a core for a “model curriculum” practical for a department with a small faculty size and limited computational facilities (relative to the major research universities at the time). Author’s address: K. Bruce, Computer Science Department, Pomona College, 185 E. Sixth St., Claremont, CA 91711. Permission to make digital/hard copy of all or part of this material without fee for personal or classroom use provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the ACM copyright/server notice, the title of the publication, and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. c  2001 ACM 0000-0000/2001/0000-0001 $5.00 ACM Journal Name, Vol. 2, No. 3, 09 2001, Pages 1–11.