The Computing Research Association has received Special Projects support to convene a workshop in February of the coming year. The purpose of invitation only workshop is to bring together participants from industry to inform and include them in the new Broadening Participation in Computing effort of the NSF. The motivation for this educational initiative is considerable: significant decreases in the number of students pursuing CS degrees, lack of agreement on the core CS content in light of increasing impact of application areas, the steady growth of size and complexity of systems, and the challenges to national competitiveness brought on by off-shoring. This meeting represents an important step in engaging the stakeholders in addressing the issues on a nationwide scale. Such a transformation is critical to information technology (IT) workforce preparation and the continued preeminence of the U.S. in technology innovation. A major outcome of workshop is the identification of areas of needed change and strategies for effecting interventions and changes that should result in a more diverse, broad, and well trained IT workforce in the United States.
Intellectual Merit: The purpose of workshop is to initiate a national discussion with key leaders to industry to catalzye efforts to broaden participation in computing careers at all points in the career pipeline. Such a transformation is critical to information technology (IT) workforce preparation and the continued preeminence of the U.S. in technology innovation. The workshop will identify areas of needed change and strategies for effecting that change.
Broader Impact: This workshop (along with other similar targeted workshops) should start a series of intervention transformations that will have impact on student at institutions throughout the nation as they prepare for careers as IT professionals, making the students better prepared to join the computing workforce of the future.
