Students from the School of Science at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, along with students from around the world, will remind the global community of the milestones that have occurred in technology within little more than 5 decades for this young academic discipline on Monday, January 11, 2010. The United States Congress declared the week of December 7 as National Computer Science Education Week, citing the need to support an "understanding of, and interest in, computer science among the public and in schools, and to ensure an ample and diverse future technology workforce." Now, just weeks later, students from Monmouth University will take a trip to Washington DC on January 11 to commemorate the founding of Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE), the first and only international honor society in the Computing and Information disciplines.

"UPE can be credited for helping to establish Computer Science and Software Engineering as academic disciplines," said Dr. Jay Wang, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monmouth University, which created one of the first Software Engineering major programs in the country.

As stated on their website at upe.acm.org, which holds the countdown calculator to January 11, the purpose of UPE is "to promote the computing and information disciplines, and to encourage their contribution to the enhancement of knowledge." But the first chapter of UPE was chartered and recognized on January 10, 1967 at Texas A&M University, so why are chapter celebrations planned for January 11? Dr. Jeff Popyack, chapter advisor at Drexel University, made an observation that "on January 11, at precisely 10:11:11, the date/time will be:

1/11/10 10:11:11

Minus the punctuation, that will be:

1111 010 1111

which any UPE member will recognize as binary for 1967, the year of UPE's founding."

Professor Maureen Paparella, the advisor to the Monmouth University chapter, and several of her students and colleagues plan to respond to Dr. Popyack's suggestion by visiting the Newseum in Washington, DC that day, not only to help bring national attention to this historic moment for UPE, but also as a result of interest in the Newseum's installation of proprietary high-end digital signage technology. In support of an initiative introduced by the Dean of Science at Monmouth University, Dr. Michael Palladino, the Monmouth University chapter of UPE is studying the use of digital signage technology to enhance their information and safety systems on campus.

The president of Monmouth University's chapter of UPE, Brianna Kipnis, is especially excited, as this will be her first visit to Washington, DC "We learned of this historic event on Monday evening when Dr. Orlando Madrigal, the president of the UPE International Organization sent out a news release via email. Within two hours, Professor Paparella and I had ten students and faculty signed up to attend the trip."

The year, one thousand nine hundred sixty-seven, the year of UPE's founding, in binary is 1111 010 1111 and on 1/11/10 at precisely 10:11:11, the date/time will be (minus the punctuation) that same binary number: 1 11 10 10 11 11 - on that Monday morning, students from Monmouth University will be waving their UPE banner and holding up their UPE key for all to see from the Newseum's Greenspun Family Terrace on Level 6 at exactly that time. The terrace provides views of the US Capitol, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Mall that will surely make the event unforgettable for the New Jersey university students.