CRA-WP Renames the Grad Cohort for URMD Workshop

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We would like to sincerely thank everyone involved in this renaming process. The community’s willingness to discuss, listen, and provide insightful feedback was essential to improving the process and outcome.

We would like to sincerely thank everyone involved in this renaming process. The community’s willingness to discuss, listen, and provide insightful feedback was essential to improving the process and outcome.

We’re pleased to announce the new name:

The Grad Cohort for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills – The IDEALS Workshop
(formerly Grad Cohort for URMD)

This process was truly a community effort that engaged and sought feedback from CRA-WP Board Members, Grad Cohort for URMD program leaders and executive steering committee members, past workshop participants and speakers, as well as CRA staff. In all, the survey was distributed to ~550 individuals.

The top choice of the community was the IDEALS Workshop, with many specifically stating the importance of having “Accessibility” in the name.

At the heart of this discussion and proposed change, the intention has been to listen to and capture the perspectives and preferences of our community, and then take swift action in enacting these changes in a timely manner. Given that this involves an evolving societal conversation it was our preference to not spell out the intended audiences in the workshop’s new name.

We acknowledge that concern over the use of the acronym and term “URM” is not necessarily felt by all. However, we also firmly believe a name change was necessary given the issues raised with the term.

Again, we are truly thankful for everyone’s involvement and are pleased to announce that applications for the 2021 Grad Cohort for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills – The IDEALS Workshop are now being accepted through Nov. 30, 2020.

Apply today by clicking this link!

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Call for Submissions: Departmental BPC Plans

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The Computing Research Association (CRA) and the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) are calling upon the academic community to create and submit Departmental BPC Plans to BPCnet.org.

Departmental BPC Plans are important because they help departments:

  • reaffirm their commitment to equity and inclusion,
  • identify and organize their BPC related goals and activities,
  • and support PIs in their department who are submitting CISE proposals requiring a Project BPC Plan at the time of award.
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2020 Scholarship for Women Studying Information Security Recipients Announced

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Thirteen women across the country were awarded SWSIS scholarships for their work in cybersecurity. The purpose of these scholarships is to provide assistance to women at the formative stages of their careers in these fields.

Sara Stehlik was the first recipient of the PrinSWSIS scholarship, awarded to a woman aspiring to work in computer security, and by her mere existence, challenging the stereotype of a cyber security professional and helping redefine what it means to be a princess.

Peggy Sue Mathis was the recipient of this year’s Rebecca Gurley Bace SWSIS Scholarship, meant to honor the memory of Becky Bace by selecting a scholarship recipient who shows her ability to mentor,  create community, and bring groups together.

Congratulations to all the 2020 recipients:

Elizabeth Anne Cerrone, Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus

Jennie Elizabeth Christensen, University of California-Santa Barbara

Julianne Cox, Volunteer State Community College

Meron Kebede, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Swathi Krithivasan, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

Morgan Livingston, University of California-Berkeley

Angela Ma, University of Maryland, College Park

Peggy Sue Mathis, University of Alabama in Huntsville

Sara Elizabeth Robinson-Camarena, Cochise College

Sarah Lynn Sha, Indiana University-Bloomington

Annette Stawsky, Cornell University

Sara Stehlik, Dakota State University

Samra Vithlani, University of Southern California

 
Read more about them here.
 

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CRA’s Position

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Dear CRA Community,

The amount of pain and suffering we are witnessing and feeling is only a snapshot of a broader social reality. We, and everyone before us, have had a role in arriving at where we are today. As such, it is of paramount importance to step up and take a stance. It is our responsibility and a moral imperative to not stand by and simply witness the events around us. We must collectively find our voice and reject racism and inequality. Silence perpetuates, doubt reinforces, and rationalization of incident after incident only compounds the pain so many in our society continue to endure.

While CRA has a long history of celebrating, promoting, and advocating for inclusivity, we cannot be satisfied with continuing the status quo. We will continue to actively stand against discrimination and hatred. We will find new ways to use our voice in Washington to advocate for policies that address the inequities that exist in our field. We will amplify the efforts of our membership organizations wherever we can to help them improve the spaces they occupy and create an environment that is more welcoming, just, and equitable to all. Only together can we begin to right the long history of wrongs that have led us to this place and time.

We start with acknowledging the issues by talking to those around us and explicitly stating that we stand with them when they stand against discrimination and hatred.

We know that racism:

  • Is systemic and institutionalized, was intentionally designed, and established well before the foundation of our nation.
  • Continues to oppress people of color around the world – denying basic human rights, denying opportunity, and even more tragically denying many of their very lives.
  • Is learned behavior that may be unlearned through education, compassion, empathy, and action.
  • Drives a wedge between communities, and in doing so limits the enviable quest for a society steeped in respect.
  • The privileged benefit from its existence and must be willing to sacrifice to overcome it.
  • Lives in our homes, schools, workplaces, parks, churches, stores, amusement parks, government, law enforcement – it lives in us all to varying degrees.

To stand against it, we:

  • Acknowledge the existence of racism within our communities and commit to defeating it.
  • Call out and reject rationalization of incidents and distortion of information.
  • Educate ourselves and those around us to be better equipped to address racism in its many forms.
  • Stand up against the status quo by using our voice and agency.
  • Commit to systemic change in laws, policies, procedures, etc.
  • Dedicate all necessary resources to create lasting change.

Ellen Zegura, Chair of the CRA Board
Andrew Bernat, CRA Executive Director

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CRA-WP Presents the Inaugural Skip Ellis Early Career Award and the 2020 Anita Borg Early Career Award

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CRA-WP is honored to present the 2020 CRA-WP Awards for both the inaugural Skip Ellis Early Career Award and the Anita Borg Early Career Award. Tawanna Dillahunt of the University of Michigan and Michel A. Kinsy of Boston University have been selected as the inaugural 2020 Skip Ellis Early Career Award recipients. The Skip Ellis […]

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Subscribe to the Modern Figures Podcast: Elevating the Voices of Black Women in Computing

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The Modern Figures podcast features diversity advocates who share their stories, perspectives and pivotal moments along their journey in computing. The series, co-hosted by Drs. Kyla McMullen and Jeremy Waisome, is sponsored by NCWIT and led by the Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computer Science (iAAMCS).

In the second season, hear from a broad group of voices and advocates for the advancement of black women in tech, including:

New episodes will debut every Monday through the end of May. To listen to the podcast, visit Apple iTunes, Google Podcast, Spotify, or Stitcher. Subscribe at http://modernfigurespodcast.com/subscribe-to-podcast/. Additionally, you can follow @modernfigurespodcast on Facebook and Instagram, and @ModFigsPodcast on Twitter.

 

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Former CRA-W Co-Chair Leah H. Jamieson receives the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal

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The Computing Research Association extends a heartfelt congratulations to former CRA-W Co-Chair Leah H. Jamieson for receiving the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal to honor her “contributions to the promotion, innovation, and inclusivity of engineering education.” CRA-WP is humbled to receive a generous contribution from Jamieson’s award as she looks to highlight “organizations that played [a] significant role in enabling and shaping the contribution” she is recognized for today. This contribution to CRA-WP programs will be used to support the success and participation of women, underrepresented minorities, and persons with disabilities in computing research and education at all levels.

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CRA-WP Welcomes Sandhya Dwarkadas as Newest Co-Chair

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CRA-WP welcomes Sandhya Dwarkadas as its newest co-chair. She joins Andrea Danyluk as co-chair, serving a 2-year term.

Sandhya Dwarkadas is the Albert Arendt Hopeman Professor of Engineering and Professor and Chair of Computer Science at the University of Rochester, with a secondary appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She received her Bachelor’s from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Rice University. Her research lies at the interface of hardware and software with a   particular focus on concurrency, resulting in over a 100 refereed publications that cross areas within systems. She has made contributions to hardware- and software-based shared memory implementations and system reconfigurability.   She is co-inventor on 11 granted U.S. patents. She is a CRA-W board member, and is currently on the editorial board of CACM Research Highlights and IEEE Micro. Her recent research focuses on addressing the challenge of leveraging the   computational power of the increasingly large core counts available on today’s processors. Her research addresses the challenge at three levels —   via scalable hardware cache coherence protocols, via improved language and runtime support for expressing and extracting application parallelism, and via operating system-level energy and resource management. She also continues to stay involved in parallel applications development, particularly in the biomedical domain.

CRA-WP would like to thank Margaret Martonosi and Julia Hirschberg for their past service and contribution to all CRA-WP programs.

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