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.
As technology becomes ever more pervasive in everyday life and across many disciplines, one might expect that the study of Computer Science (CS) would become more appealing to more people, and to a broader spectrum of students. However, the number of undergraduate CS majors in 2009 is still much lower than it was during the dot-com boom of 2000…
Computer science, computer engineering, information technology, informatics, computing and a host of other terms: we have used them all to denote this wonderfully fascinating and diverse thing we do. We have debated connotation and denotation as we seek a clear and compelling exegesis of our field. In so doing, I suspect we have occasionally lost sight of one key aspect, namely the importance of invisibility. What follows is a serious but whimsical look at invisibility’s power.
On September 30, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing opened at the J.W. Marriott Conference Center in Tucson. The sold-out crowd totaled 1,570 women and men including 520 industry and government professionals, 213 academic faculty and staff, and 678 students.
The Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program within the CISE Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF), headed up by Program Director Jan Cuny, demonstrates NSF’s serious commitment to increasing the participation of those who have long been underrepresented in computing. Numerous BPC Alliances and Demonstration Projects provide a wide range of services for many underrepresented groups. One such alliance, the Empowering Leadership…
The United States and Canada have been facing a reduction in enrollments in computer science courses and a drop in the number of offerings of high school courses in computing and related subjects. In this report, we will discuss a recent attempt to reinvigorate the stream of high school students interested in this topic. We hope that more students will become interested in computer science if they can pursue interesting applications than if they are only learning to program for its own sake.
Graduate students planning a research career in computer science are often asked, “Do you want to go into academia or industry after your Ph.D.?” However, there is a stealth third option for a researcher: a career at a government lab. This column sheds some light on this “hidden” career. There are many government labs in the United States conducting computer science research (for a partial list, see: http://cra-w.org/govindresearch). Although some of these institutions focus on classified or weapons research, most include unclassified or basic research in their missions, and a substantial minority work only on unclassified research.
It is startling to learn that approximately 16% of the US population of working age have disabilities. Some of these individuals are so cognitively or emotionally disabled that they cannot work, but most are capable of working and contributing to society. Within information technology (IT) fields the numbers compiled by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from various sources are interesting:
The current enrollment crises in computer science and informatics at the post-secondary level have led to a much broader recognition of K-12 education as a critical partner in addressing pipeline and equity issues. The good news is that the current crisis has increased the willingness of many departments and faculty to reach across the educational barriers that have traditionally separated us. The bad news is that many are still not sure how to do so in a way that can lead to sustained improvements at both levels.
Preventing sexism in CSE doctoral programs can increase women’s retention. With funding from the National Center for Women & IT (NCWIT), CRA has been studying women in the CRA_W Graduate Cohort program. This program welcomes women graduate students into the computing community and provides them with role models and a broad range of strategies for success. Analyses have produced some interesting findings about women’s retention in CSE doctoral programs.
Government and industrial internships can enhance the retention of students in the computer science pipeline by augmenting the educational and research experiences they receive in school. In academic programs with large numbers of students where personal attention from professors may be limited, an internship can provide one-on-one or small-group mentoring from a computer science researcher or professional. Internships can provide access to equipment, training, expertise or other resources that may not be readily available in the academic environment
According to the most recent Computing Research Association (CRA) Taulbee Survey, African-Americans represent 1.3 percent of all computing sciences faculty. Nationally, across all disciplines, African-Americans represent 5.2 percent of all academic faculty. The African-American Researchers in Computing Sciences (AARCS) program was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program in 2006. It aims to narrow the gap between computing science faculty and the national average by eliminating disbeliefs, concerns and misunderstandings about graduate school, research, and computing sciences faculty among African-American undergraduate computing sciences majors.
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