This Special Project award to the Computing Research Association's Committee on the status of women (CRA-W) will provide support to CRA-W to expand and enhance its activities. Funding is provided to maintain the CRA-W committee and to support new initiative's such as the long-term tracking of graduate student cohorts, career mentoring mini-workshops, a reunion of former participants of CRA-W's programs for undergraduate research mentoring, new projects for women researchers in industrial labs, joint efforts with the Coalition to Diversifying Computing, a service called Friends of CRA-W to help principal investigators implement meaningful diversity plans, and a leadership summit for senior women.
The Computing Research Association's Committee on the status of women (CRA-W) has been a national leader since 1991 in positive efforts to increase the number and success of women in Computer Science and Engineering (CS&E) research. It is an action-based committee, implementing projects aimed at eliminating barriers to the full participation of women at all stages of the research pipeline. CRA-W has had a significant impact on the Computer Science & Engineering (CS&E) community, directly impacting over 2000 women and indirectly influencing thousands of others.
The intellectual merit of this project lies in CRA-W facilitating a broad range of research activities in CS&E. CRA-W's commitment to program evaluation will provides important data on what works and what doesn't work for others interested in starting similar programs.
The broader impact of this effort lies in CRA-W providing mentoring opportunities and community building to encourage women in CS&E research, and to increase the awareness of gender issues across the CS&E discipline. CRA-W programs address every rung of the ladder of higher education in CS&E. The networks of women mentoring women that CRA-W builds across institutions serve an essential function in ameliorating their isolation. CRA-W programs have a significant impact on institutions and their approach to including women in the research enterprise.
