The Targeted Infusion project - Developing a new Information Technology Curriculum at Virginia State University - seeks to develop a new Information Technology (IT) curriculum within the Computer Science program at Virginia State University (VSU). The project is aimed at attracting more African American young men and women to pursue careers in information technology and become highly skilled IT professionals. The main goals of the project are: to establish a new IT curriculum within the CS program at VSU; to provide support to students who would like to pursue an IT related STEM field; to improve recruitment and retention in the IT related STEM fields at VSU; to provide support to faculty members at an HBCU to develop new research and education projects for career development and leadership in STEM related fields; to enhance teaching and research capacity in the IT area at VSU, and to attract more African American students into the IT field. Educational components of this project complement the research and teaching interests of the participating faculty members, hence the proposed activities will allow faculty members at VSU to bridge research and education in the classroom. Curriculum and lab experiments developed in this proposed project will be made freely available, which may benefit other educators.
At Virginia State University (VSU) a team of researchers came up with a set of ideas to enhance the coverage, pedagogy, and rigor of the computer science (CS) curriculum so as to give the program a broader appeal to prospective students who are interested in computing and information technology (IT). The idea later flourished to encompass the task of developing an alternative CS curriculum with emphasis in IT that is consistent with the 2008 IEEE-CS/ACM guideline for IT curriculum. The NSF Targeted Infusion Program grant support enabled the team to develop and implements a new IT track within the existing CS curriculum. The funding also enabled the research team to enhance the existing lab infrastructure and create three new computer laboratories: the Forensics lab, the Computer Network lab, and the Robotics lab. The overall impact of the project was two folds. For those students who seek immediate employment in the IT related industries after graduation, the curriculum provides with marketable and relevant skills. For those students who are interested to pursue graduate studies, the curriculum provides a broader application context to which they can utilize their knowledge. As a result of the funded project, the team was able to achieve the following set of major outcomes. The team had developed a new IT curriculum within the CS program along with the supporting laboratories and course materials. The team has financially supported students who were interested to enroll into the new IT track. Most of these students were minority and female students who are underrepresented in the IT fields, thus helping create diversity in the current and future IT workforce. The team has provided support to CS faculty in the form of travel expenditure coverage to research conferences and summer salaries to supervise undergraduate research activities. Such financial support has enhanced faculty research in IT areas and has improved undergraduate students’ engagements in research activities. These activities resulted in faculty publications and the participating students’ oral and/or poster presentations at research conferences. The team has conducted a number of outreach activities that include advertising the new track and the availability of financial support, conducting VSU IT Knowledge Contests, and hosting Summer IT Boot-camps for local high school students. The IT Knowledge Contents and the Summer Boot-camps had more than 100 participants. After the conclusion of the funded project, the team has continued to improve the IT curriculum and the supporting laboratories as well as course materials. The team also continues to advertise and recruit students who are interested to pursue IT related discipline at VSU. As of this academic year, VSU has institutionalized the Undergraduate Center to provide year-round and summer support for faculty and students who are interested to engage in research activities.
