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.

Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP):

By: Jane Stout, Director of CERPIn: /

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.

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CERPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: Diversity Drives Innovation

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Lack of diversity in computing is an enormous opportunity cost for technical innovation. For example, recent studies published by NCWIT show patents with diverse authors are cited more and companies with a more diverse sales force have more income. Diversity drives innovation. Even as demand for computing professionals grows, women and minorities are severely under-represented.

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CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: Hispanic Momentum in Computing

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Hispanics have the highest growth rates among all groups in the United States, yet they remain considerably underrepresented in computing careers and obtaining advanced degrees. With computing careers growing at a faster than average rate in the United States (BLS, 2010) and internationally (Cervantes, 2003), it’s important to increase the number of Hispanics who complete computing programs and who are qualified to obtain high-status, lucrative positions. . In 2004, seven Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) formed the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) to consolidate their strengths, resources, and concerns with the aim of increasing the number of Hispanics who pursue and complete baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing areas (Gates et al. 2011).

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CRAGuest Article, Expanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline – Growing the Tech Talent Pool: NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Program Scales Up

In: /

In May 2007, the National Center for Women & IT (NCWIT) launched the Award for Aspirations in Computing at its annual members meeting, which that year took place in Boulder, Colorado. Fifteen young women were selected from local Boulder and Denver high schools and recognized for their aspirations and achievements in computing.

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CRA-WPGuest Article, Expanding the Pipeline

2012 CAPP Advanced Career Mentoring Workshop

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The Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) recently held the 2012 CAPP Advanced Career Mentoring Workshop in San Francisco, CA on November 16-17, 2012. The goal of the CAPP Workshop is to increase the percentage of Computer Science and Engineering women faculty members and researchers/scientists who reach the top of their respective career tracks.

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CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Expanding the Pipeline: Latinas in Computing Find Their Sweet Spot

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The Latinas in Computing (LiC) community was established after a Birds of a Feather session at the 2006 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference (GHC). LiC’s primary goal is to promote the professional growth of Latinas and to increase their representation in the computing community.

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CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Terrific CRA-W Mentoring Workshops at Grace Hopper 2012

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CRA-W hosted another successful set of Career Mentoring workshops on the afternoon of Oct 3rd at Grace Hopper 2012 in Baltimore. Designed to be a “bite-sized” version of our two day Career Mentoring workshops, CRA-W sessions at Grace Hopper are organized into three tracks: Undergraduate, Graduate and Early Professional, each consisting of three one hour sessions. CRA-W has run these workshops at Grace Hopper since 2009. Our workshops consistently have a large number of attendees and receive very positive ratings on the Grace Hopper attendee survey. In 2012, all nine sessions had more than 70 attendees and the final session in the Graduate track on “Building Your Professional Network” had over 150 people learning about and actively practicing their networking skills. Slides from all the sessions are available on the CRA-W website on the Career Mentoring Workshops at Grace Hopper page.

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CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

The Grace Hopper Regional Consortium:

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Several computing organizations work at the national level to increase women’s participation in computing, but few seek regional level transformation. Regional events overcome impediments to women’s broad and deep engagement in computing. Read full article.

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CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

Academic Career Workshops for Underrepresented Groups

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The first ACW was conducted in the fall of 2005 on a shoestring budget and the beneficence of Texas A&M University. There were 16 attendees (mostly assistant professors and late-term graduate students) and four senior computer science/computational mathematics faculty. The panels included navigating the tenure process, starting a research program, and managing work/life balance; in addition, a major component involved research proposal development. The latter component consisted of a presentation on proposal development by a former NSF program officer, as well as a mock review panel. We obtained permission from proposers to use their awarded and declined NSF proposals in a mock NSF proposal review panel.

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CRA-WPExpanding the Pipeline

The National Girls Collaborative Project:

In: /

Throughout the United States, many initiatives are underway to engage youth in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). There are also a large number of organizations seeking to increase diversity and gender equity in STEM. The National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) occupies a unique role among these activities in that it facilitates collaboration with all stakeholders focused on increasing diversity and engagement in STEM, connects them to girl-serving STEM programs, and provides access to information and resources that enhance the impact and effectiveness of these initiatives.

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CRA-WPGuest Article, Expanding the Pipeline

Where are the Minorities in Computing?

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It is well recognized that increasing the diversity of the workforce is very important to the field of computing. In this article we focus on diversity within doctoral programs because it has a significant impact on diversity among both faculty members and researchers in industry and government labs. In particular, we focus on the source of minority students for graduate programs in computer science with respect to the following underrepresented groups: African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indian or Alaska Natives.

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CRA-WPGuest Article, Expanding the Pipeline