The Programming Languages Mentoring Workshop (PLMW) will take place just before the flagship programming language conference, Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2012). This grant will support 15 or more students to attend the PLMW event plus the POPL conference. While there is other funding available, this grant is intended specifically to increase the numbers of students from underrepresented groups and gives priority to US citizens and permanent residents. The broader impacts of the grant relate to the need to broaden participation, provide opportunities for students to receive mentoring from top members of the programming languages community, and build the next generation of researchers and knowledgeable practitioners in this important research arena.
To encourage senior undergraduate and beginning graduate students to pursue research careers in the theory of programming languages, Stephanie Weirich, Kathleen Fisher and Ron Garcia organized the Programming Language Mentoring Workshop (PLMW), whichtook place on January 24, 2012, the day before the ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principals of Programming Languages (POPL), the most important meeting for researchers interested in the theory of programming languages. Registration for the event was open to everyone, but the workshop organizers were specifically interested inattracting women and underrepresented minority students. The website for the workshop is publicly available and includes the slides from all speakers (www.cis.upenn.edu/~sweirich/plmw12/). This grant provided travel support for 14 students to attend the PLMW 2012 and the POPL conference. The workshop organizers solicited funds from other sources as well. In the end, 109 students were awarded travel scholarships. Almost all of the scholarship recipients would not have been able to attend POPL or PLMW without assistance. A large percentage of the attendees of the workshop completed a survey about their experiences. Notably, 42% of the participants indicated that that the workshop increased their interest in earning a graduate degree in the field of programming languages and 62% reported that itincreased their interest in a research career in this area ofcomputing. Furthermore, 63% reported that the workshop increased their confidence that they could have a successful research career in thisfield. Overall, the workshop attendees were enthusiastic, with 48%rating it "Excellent".
