Expanding the Pipeline Archives - Page 6 of 13

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.

Expanding the Pipeline: The 2016 ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Shows Inclusion Matters

By: Jerri Barrett, Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in ITIn: November 2016, Vol. 28/No.10 /

The 10th annual ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing (hashtag #Tapia2016) was held in Austin, Texas, on September 14-17. This year’s conference had a record-breaking 965 attendees, achieving 20 percent growth over 2015. Eighty sponsors and 150 colleges and universities were represented. With the theme “Diversity Matters,” the Tapia conference brought together students, faculty, researchers, and professionals from all backgrounds and ethnicities in computing, and is the premier venue to promote and celebrate diversity in the field. The Tapia conference was sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and presented by the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT).

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: PROMISE Brings a New Phase of #ThinkBigDiversity to Maryland Grad Students

By: Renetta Garrison Tull, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyIn: October 2016, Vol. 28/No.9 /

Graduate students in STEM fields can find their M.S. and doctoral experiences to be both isolating and academically challenging. Loneliness can be particularly poignant when the graduate student is a member of an underrepresented group; has had an undergraduate experience that was connected by school spirit, such as collectively rooting for the college’s sports teams; or has participated in group-based academic student success initiatives, such as the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, which primarily connect to undergraduate students.

To combat isolation, PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation, hosts the annual Summer Success Institute (SSI), a pre-semester weekend conference in August for graduate students. The SSI features professional development activities that directly cater to the needs of graduate students in STEM, and peripherally to “postdoctoral fellows, professors, and career professionals (PP&P).”

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: The National GEM Consortium Shines a Bright Light on Graduate Education and Retention

By: Patty Lopez and Shameeka Emanuel, Intel CorporationIn: September 2016, Vol. 28/No.8 /

GEM is a network of leading corporations, government laboratories, universities, and research institutions that enables qualified students from underrepresented communities to pursue graduate education in applied science and engineering. Its mission is to enhance the value of the nation’s human capital by increasing the participation of underrepresented groups—namely, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans—at the master’s and doctoral levels in engineering and science. GEM recruits high-quality underrepresented students seeking to pursue advanced degrees in applied science and engineering, and matches their specific skills to the specific technical needs of GEM employer members.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: LAtINiTY: Empowering Latin American Women in Technology

By: Natalie Gil and Jocelyn SimmondsIn: August 2016, Vol. 28/No.7 /

The Latinas in Computing (LiC) community was established with the help of The Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology (ABI) at the 2006 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). Recognizing the status of Latinas as a double minority in North America, this community defines and implements strategies to improve the participation of the current and next generations of Latinas in technology. These dual strategies complement the work done by the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) that focused on the recruitment and retention of minority students in computing-based fields in North America, and the work done by the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) to grow the research pipeline of women in computing. National Science Foundation (NSF) data shows Hispanic or Latino enrollment increased from 7.2% in 2002 to 9.9% in 2012, but the hiring of underrepresented minorities seems to be “stuck in neutral.”

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

How to Recruit More Diverse Students: Challenges and Opportunities

By: Colleen Arendt and Rebecca DohrmanIn: June 2016, Vol. 28/No.6 /

In an era when the media talks about higher education in unique ways—such as focusing on the need for universities to display high post-graduation job placement rates and higher starting salaries to justify increasing tuition, and the need for college students to be well trained for the available opportunities in our national labor force—computing is perfectly positioned for recruiting prospective students. Indeed, for some groups and universities, growth in the area of computing has been strong and continues to grow (Zweben & Bizot, 2015). One fact sometimes cited by programs looking to encourage prospective students to matriculate in their major is to say that workers in STEM disciplines command higher wages, earning 26% more than their non-STEM peers. Another message focuses on the fact that workers with STEM degrees earn more even when they do not work in a STEM occupation (Langdon, McKittrick, Beede, Khan, & Doms, 2010). Despite the fact that these messages are well received by some individuals, for others, these messages are not sufficient to recruit them into a computing program.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

TECHNOLOchicas: Raising Awareness of Technological Opportunities for Latinas

By: Adriane Bradberry, Communications Director, NCWIT, Jannie Fernandez, TECHNOLOchicas & K-12 Alliance Program Manager, NCWIT, and Adrian Thompson, Editorial Consultant, NCWITIn: May 2016, Vol. 28/No.5 /

In the U.S., both the Hispanic population and the number of computing and STEM-related jobs are exponentially on the rise. By 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor expects 1.1 million computing-related job openings, making it one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy. The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics reports that currently one in five women in the U.S. are Hispanic, and by 2060, nearly one in three women will be Hispanic.

Yet, in 2015, only one percent of the jobs in the computing workforce were occupied by Latinas. Furthermore, in 2014, Hispanic women received 2 percent of doctoral degrees in computer and information sciences.

Our country’s global economic power and influence greatly depend on our innovation competitiveness, but we’re not taking advantage of our diverse population. Latinas represent a vastly untapped talent pool, and the current representation of Latina girls and women in tech is dismal, both in the workforce and in education. Developing Latinas as qualified, technical job candidates is vital in not only increasing the bottom line of the U.S. economy and creating diversity in the computing workforce, but also for improving the economic outlook of the Hispanic community.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline – Building Recruiting and Inclusion for Diversity (BRAID): Emerging Research on Diversifying the CS Major

By: Linda J. Sax, Kathleen J. Lehman and Jennifer M. BlaneyIn: March 2016, Vol. 28/No.3 /

In August 2014, Maria Klawe, President of Harvey Mudd College (HMC), and Telle Whitney, President of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), jointly established Building Recruiting and Inclusion for Diversity (BRAID). The BRAID initiative, with support from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Intel, involves 15 computer science departments across the U.S. that are committed to implementing changes to their introductory computer science courses, pathways into the major, departmental climate, and outreach efforts in hopes of increasing the recruitment and retention of women and underrepresented minority (URM) students in the computer science major.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: On-Ramping to Academia: Returning to Academic From Industry or Research Laboratories

By: Coleen Carrigan, the California Polytechnic Institute at San Luis Obispo, and Eve Riskin, University of WashingtonIn: February 2016, Vol. 28/No.2 /

Pursuing scientific or engineering careers in industry, government, or private research after getting a Ph.D. once was considered a one-way ticket out of academia. However, in 2008, the University of Washington’s ADVANCE program received a National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE called “On-Ramps into Academia” to counter this belief. The goal of On-Ramps was to increase the pool of female faculty in STEM available to all universities by providing professional development to Ph.D.-level women in industry or research laboratories who wanted to transition into faculty positions. A popular strategy for increasing women faculty in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) departments is to hire from other universities, but this strategy fails to increase the number of women faculty nationally.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

CRA-W Mentoring at the 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

By: Tracy Camp, CRA-W MemberIn: January 2016, Vol. 28/No.1 /

The 2015 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) was the largest-ever gathering of women technologists. GHC 2015 was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, from October 14 -16, 2015. Following the trend of recent years, the size of the conference dramatically increased once again: from 3,600 in 2012 to 4,700 in 2013 (~31% increase) to 7,800 in 2014 (~66% increase) to more than 12,000 in 2015 (~54% increase).

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: The Movement to Change the Face of CS Education is Growing

By: Melissa Jones, Code.orgIn: November 2015, Vol. 27/No.10 /

Code.org began almost three years ago with a mission to change the face of computer science (CS) education. In 2013, we started with a short film that went viral. Since then we’ve been building a start-up nonprofit organization working to give every student in every school the opportunity to learn foundational computer science skills. We’ve seen phenomenal results and impact from this mission.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

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Exploring Computer Science: Active Learning for Broadening Participation in Computing

By: Jane Margolis, Joanna Goode and Kevin R. BinningIn: October 2015, Vol. 27/No.9 /

An opinion piece published in The New York Times entitled “Are College Lectures Unfair?” provides a clue to the persistent gender and race gaps in computer science [1]. The author, Annie Murphy Paul, poses several provocative questions: “Does the college lecture discriminate? Is it biased against undergraduates who are not white, male, and affluent?” She proceeds to explain how a growing body of research shows that “the lecture is not generic or neutral, but a specific cultural form that favors some people while discriminates against others, including women, minorities, and low-income first generation college students.” Paul then contrasts the lecture with active learning, where students construct knowledge through hands-on problem solving, engaging with the material through group work, collaborative thinking, and where students anchor their learning in knowledge they possess and cultural references with which they are familiar. For educators of computer science, a field that has been largely taught through lecture and direct instruction, research supporting active inquiry-based learning should give everyone pause to reflect and discuss.

CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline