Tag Archive: Expanding the Pipeline
“Expanding the Pipeline” is a regular column in Computing Research News. The column serves both as a vehicle for describing projects and issues related to women and underrepresented groups in computing. The column is guest-authored by individuals who share their insight and experiences from their active participation in programs designed to involve women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in education and research. Patty Lopez is the column editor.
by Philip Guo, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego Everyone who attends college learns a formal curriculum by taking classes, but there is also a hidden curriculum just beneath the surface of their college experience. This hidden curriculum consists of the “unspoken lessons, norms, values, and perspectives that impact learning and academic performance. […]
By Rosalinda Garcia (Oregon State University), Margaret Burnett (Oregon State University), and Patricia Morreale (Kean University) What happens if CS faculty teach inclusive design skills throughout core undergraduate CS courses? What might the outcomes of an integrated contiguous experience be? Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), we have developed a new broadening participation in […]
The CRA-WP 2023 Grad Cohort Workshop for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills (IDEALS) was held in Honolulu, Hawaii March 23-25. The workshop is part of an effort to widen the participation, access, opportunities, and experience of individuals in computing research by building and mentoring nationwide communities throughout their graduate studies. The workshop has […]
The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP), founded by Christine Alvarado in the Computer Science Department at UC San Diego (UCSD), provides authentic research experiences to early undergraduates over one academic year. Since its inception in 2014, the program has transformed the landscape of undergraduate research at UC San Diego by significantly broadening access to research among early students, with over 350 student participants, 60% of whom identify as women or non-binary, and 22% as Black, Latinx, or Native American students. Further, ERSP has retained most participants (97% since the program matured).
This article presents the progress made in Broadening Participation in Computing and calls upon the entire computing community to take on the important goal of addressing underrepresentation in computing disciplines.
The Distributed REsearch Apprenticeships for Master’s (DREAM) is a pilot NSF program being offered by a nationwide consortium of colleges and universities that have created “bridge to MS in CS” programs for students with non-CS bachelor’s degrees. Schools in the MSCS Pathways to Computing Consortium provide a new pathway for people who studied something other than CS as undergraduates to enter the tech field. The strong emphasis of this effort is to provide a new pathway into computing for individuals from populations historically minoritized in tech (women, LGBQTIA, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American/Hawaiian/Alaskan/Asian Pacific Islander students, and students with disabilities). Consortium members sign a membership agreement that, among other things, confirms their commitment to increasing the diversity of their graduate programs. Students in these Consortium pathways come from a wide array of undergraduate backgrounds that span the STEM disciplines, humanities, social sciences, business, and the arts.
Imagine you walk into Japanese 101 and on the first day the professor asks, “Has anyone taken Japanese before?” and everyone raises their hand but you and a handful of other students. Imagine then that your classmates not only raise their hands but respond to the professor in Japanese! At age 18, I would have been intimidated and likely would have dropped the class. This is how many of our students feel in the first course for computing majors – overwhelmed by the sense that they are already behind when in theory they have only just begun.
The trouble is that prior experience in CS is not uniformly distributed across all genders, races and ethnicities, and further CS is only offered in approximately half of U.S. high schools (with more of those high schools in regions of economic privilege). Thus, the individuals experiencing the first course required for a computing major (CS1) in this way are more likely to be from less privileged geographies and from genders and races/ethnicities historically marginalized in tech.
It is imperative that computing departments address the distribution of prior experience in coding, but how they respond will depend on the context of the department and the university. In this article, we outline five of the more popular approaches, illustrating the contexts in which they work best, and possible pitfalls.
Efforts to increase participation from minoritized communities has been going on in earnest for over a decade. Unfortunately, we have yet to expand the group of faculty and staff engaged in these activities and have only made a marginal difference in who is studying computing. This article discusses BPC Plans as an attempt to supplement and scale-up the computing community’s efforts to address the issue of lack of diversity in computing.
The SIGCSE 2022 Technical Symposium was a hybrid event with both virtual and in-person participation in Providence, Rhode Island March 2-5. Across the three conference tracks of Computing Education Research, Experience Reports and Tools, and Position and Curricula Initiatives, there were 144 accepted papers. Additionally, there were 15 panels, 9 special sessions, 24 workshops, 15 papers as part of the ACM Student Research Competition, 34 birds of a feather sessions, 15 demos, 17 lightning talks, 6 nifty assignments, 99 posters, and 29 exhibitors. The Pathable platform was used to provide virtual participants access to the conference sessions.
In an era of rapidly evolving technology and increasing interconnectedness, full participation in society depends on the successful use of technology. Thus, to ensure equity and participation for people with disabilities, technology must be accessible—we must create and adapt interactive systems to improve access to technology and to the world at large. The University of Washington Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) is dedicated to propelling accessible technology research and education from incremental improvements to paradigm-shifting breakthroughs that enable greater inclusion and participation for people of all abilities. This article briefly introduces CREATE’s mission and then highlights some of its recent research into the impact of the pandemic on students and best practices for hybrid meetings.
In 2011, my team of six instructors led a yearlong CS course for 120 Black/Latinx middle-school students in Washington, DC. After first-day introductions, we asked them to name a computer scientist. Despite six Black men/women in front of them, we heard only three names: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. It was then that I realized if they didn’t see us as computer scientists, then how would they ever be able to see themselves as one? We knew we had work to do.
We spent the entire year dismantling the narrative that CS was restricted to White and Asian men and reinforcing how not only were they computer scientists, but also change agents. Students learned much more than what CS was, but also whom it should represent and why these identities mattered.
We were fortunate to have a team that didn’t fit the “traditional” narrative leading that effort. However, this won’t always be the case. As we continue to make strides in CS education, the following strategies can help to ensure that the who and why are prioritized, regardless of the student or instructor.
