Tag Archive: CERP
Articles relevant to the CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP).
This article briefly describes the proposed research in two new CAREER awards. These two awards represent a new area of exploration for CISE. Computing education research offers new opportunities for computer science departments and schools, and we also describe some of them.
Thirty-five deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) and 20 hearing undergraduate computing majors reported who they went to most often for career advice and assistance.
Black and Hispanic Students at Minority-Serving Institutions are more interested in a computing research career than their counterparts attending Non-Minority Serving Institutions
Recently, 2776 computing majors reported their parents’ highest education level on CERP’s annual Data Buddies survey.
Two years since its inception, CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) has proven to be a valuable resource for the computing community. CERP’s benchmark survey research mechanism, the Data Buddies Project, generates reliably large and diverse datasets pertaining to computing students’ experiences in their degree programs. CERP’s data had originally been slated primarily for “comparative evaluation” purposes; students’ experiences gleaned from survey data are pitted against each other as a function of whether or not they have participated in a given professional development program. Since August 2014, CERP’s data have been harnessed for a second purpose, which is to conduct basic social science research on issues of diversity of computing. This new focus is supported by a new grant awarded to CRA: NSF DUE-1431112, Promoting a Diverse Computing Workforce: Using National Survey Data to Understand Persistence Across Undergraduate Student Groups, which was written and is overseen by CERP Director, Jane Stout.
515 students who were 4th or 5th year undergraduates in computing programs reported their parental education, in-major GPA, and whether or not they had an REU during their undergraduate program. First generation college students were significantly less likely to have had an REU, even at the highest GPA levels. Other questions established that the reasons for nonparticipation were not lack of interest (first generation sophomores were equally as interested in an REU as non first generation students, 41% vs. 43%) or finances (first generation seniors who did not participate in REUs were no more likely to say that an REU didn’t pay well enough, 23% vs. 23% of those whose parents had bachelor’s degrees and 31% whose parents had graduate degrees). However, high-GPA first generation students were more likely to say that they were not aware of available research opportunities (students with GPA > 3.5, 48% of first generation students and 50% of those whose parents had bachelor’s degrees vs. 25% of those whose parents had graduate degrees). Therefore, REU programs might want to make a special outreach effort to these students to make sure that they are aware of opportunities and that they understand what is required to apply and participate.
During the spring semester of 2014, we asked a sample of undergraduate students who were graduating/had graduated during the 2013-2014 academic year about their plans for the after graduation. 84% of students planned to continue pursuing computing in some capacity. The vast majority of students (62%) had plans to work in a computing field right after college. Of the full sample, only 9% planned to pursue a PhD in the field of computing.
We asked undergraduate students to indicate the degree to which receiving encouragement from family, friends and teachers led them to pursue a major in computing. Among women, race mattered, p .05. Together, this finding highlights the differential experiences of students in computing as a function of gender as well as race.
One hundred eighteen graduate students (n = 75 women, n= 143 men) indicated (a) the degree to which they endorse the stereotype that women are less capable in computing that men; (b) how much they felt they “belong” in computing and (c) their self-efficacy in computing. Men endorsed the negative stereotype to a greater degree than women, p < .01. However, among women, stronger endorsement of the negatively stereotype was associated with a lower sense of belonging and lower sense efficacy in computing, ps < .05; men’s stereotype endorsement was unrelated to their belonging and self-efficacy. These results highlight the importance of fostering a stereotype-free training environment so that women’s self-concept in computing is unconstrained by negative cultural beliefs about their ability.
Jane Stout, Director of CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP), is the PI on a three-year grant recently awarded to CRA by NSF for the amount of $783,975. The project, entitled Promoting a Diverse Computing Workforce: Using National Survey Data to Understand Persistence Across Undergraduate Student Groups, will use data collected from CERP’s Data Buddies program, to understand predictors of student retention in computing, with specific focus on the experiences of underrepresented groups. Data collection for the project will begin during the fall of 2014, and track students’ successes and persistence through 2017.
CERP recently compared critical outcomes of 187 undergraduate computing students who had participated in a formal research experience (REU) during the 2012 academic year. Students of racial minority who had participated in a REU reported greater gains in (a) knowledge about the graduate admission process, (b) academic and career self-efficacy, and (c) intentions to persist in computing compared to students of racial majority. These findings suggest that REUs in computing provide students of racial minority with an opportunity to be better prepared to apply for graduate study and develop self-efficacy. Further, formal REUs may be a particularly effective strategy for facilitating the matriculation of racial minority students through the computing pipeline.
