Tag Archive: CRA-WP
Articles relevant to the CRA Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP).
The Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award. The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and an inspiration for her commitment in increasing the participation of women in computing research.
Startup non-profit Code.org is working to make inroads into one of the most gaping holes in education. Out of all students taking advanced math and science courses at the K-12 level, only two percent are studying computer science, despite the fact that over half of all STEM jobs are in computing. Code.org founders, tech entrepreneurs Ali and Hadi Partovi, saw something wrong with this picture. The organization’s first project, a short film on the importance of learning computer programming, went viral. Now, Code.org is advancing with long-term policy and education initiatives to bring computer science to all K-12 schools — and a campaign this December to get 10 million students to try it out.
On September 19, 2013, the computer science research community lost a stellar and vibrant, researcher and leader, Mary Jean Harrold, Professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology, age 66, from cancer. Mary Jean was particularly effective and energetic as CRA-W Co-Chair and Board member. She was a role model, leader, and initiator of programs to increase the number of women participating and succeeding in computer science research careers. She was CRA-W Co-Chair (2003 to 2006) and led the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program for several years. Mary Jean was an inspiring speaker and mentor every year at CRA-W, CRA, and ICSE mentoring events, influencing hundreds of students and young researchers. “She was a great researcher – one of the most highly cited in software engineering – and a wonderful person – she had the ability to light up any room she entered.” “Not only was she an outstanding researcher, she was an inspiring person.”
On March 6, 2013, the day before the SIGCSE 2013 Symposium in Denver, Colorado, the CRA-W provided a full-day Career Mentoring Workshop for Educators (CMW-E) for women faculty and graduate students interested in teaching careers. Specifically, the workshop targeted women faculty early in their career who are in teaching-track or teaching-focused positions or female graduate students close to finishing their PhD who are interested in such teaching positions. By co-locating with SIGCSE, the attendees are encouraged to stay to attend the SIGCSE Symposium.
In the US, increasing the number of students who matriculate, graduate, and enter the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields—in particular, computing—is a national imperative. My 15 years of experience with MentorNet (http://www.mentornet.org), an online program that matches undergraduate and graduate students in STEM disciplines with working professionals and guides them through a one-on-one mentoring relationship for eight months, demonstrates that individuals can help to diversify and develop the next generation of computer scientists. You too can become a mentor and grow professionally and personally—not to mention have fun—while doing good.
We administered a post-graduation survey to students 1-2 years after they had earned their B.S. in computing to assess their current career status. Survey respondents were more likely to be enrolled in a PhD computing graduate program if they had participated in a CRA-W/CDC-sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) than if they had participated in Other REUs or No REUs, p < .05.
The annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is a multi-day conference focused exclusively on the research and career interests of women in computing. GHC is the flagship conference of the Anita Borg Institute and is presented in partnership with the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). Inspired by the legacy of Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the architect behind COBOL, GHC was first held in 1994, led by Anita Borg, founder of the Anita Borg Institute (ABI), and Telle Whitney, current CEO of ABI. GHC encourages women to pursue and remain in the field of computer science by providing a wide range of role models, peer-networking opportunities, and up-to-date information on advanced technical opportunities and career paths in computing. The conference offers multiple sessions designed to address specific career development needs of women in computing.
The Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) program has evolved in a number of ways since it was introduced by CRA-W under the name “CREW” in 1998. But several key ingredients – collaboration, cohort, and strong mentoring – remain central to the program. Administered jointly by CRA-W and the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) since 2004, CREU encourages and supports undergraduates and minorities in computing research. The goal of the program is to increase the number of women and minorities who continue on to graduate school in computer science and computer engineering.
It is now well established that the field of computing research is lacking in demographic diversity, both in the academy and in industry. To address this issue, many computing-related mentorship and training programs with diversity goals have been established. But do they really work? And how, exactly, do we determine whether they do? In this article, I discuss the lack of diversity that exists in computing, examples of programs that have been developed to address the lack of diversity, and a new evaluation center at the CRA headquarters that offers rigorous, comparative evaluation of how participants in a given program fare in their computing career progression relative to non-participants. We invite all computing community members to get involved with CERP by (a) providing data to enable us to do comparative evaluation, (b) employing our infrastructure for program evaluation, and/or (c) by being an active audience as we learn about ways to increase diversity in computing.
Undergraduate students who had participated in summer REUs were asked about the degree to which they obtained experience with the publication process while engaged in those REUs. Participants in CRA-W/CDC summer REU programs indicated that they had obtained significantly more experience with the publication process than students who had taken part in other summer REUs, p ≤ .05. Click here for full details.
Two samples of undergraduate students graduating with computing majors indicated their plans for the fall; data were collected during the spring of 2011 and 2012. CRA-W/CDC REU participants indicated that they planned to enroll in a computer science graduate program in the fall at a higher rate than any other type of students, p ≤ .05.
