The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) located on the U.S.-Mexico border has in the Fall of 1989, a student body comprised of 55.4% Hispanic, 33.3% Anglo, 3% Black, and 1.7% other minorities. It's Computer Science Department is CSAB accredited. There were 239 undergraduates (53% Hispanic) and 48 graduate students (25% Hispanic) enrolled in 1989. Computer science enrollments, unlike the national trend, have been increasing over the last several years. The primary goal of the project is to upgrade the quality of education offered their predominantly minority student body. To accomplish this they must: o Attract and retain students, particularly minority students, through improved instructional support and outreach activities o Encourage and prepare their most talented students to pursue graduate education either at UTEP or elsewhere o Enhance and support the research productivity of the faculty. An outstanding feature of their plan is the involvement of upper division and graduate student assistants. Each student assistant will be directly involved in both teaching and research. The use of student assistants provides many benefits, particularly in the educational program. Pipeline Activities: One of their major thrusts in computer science is to increase the number of minority students intending to major in computer science. They will accomplish this by career development support in area middle and high schools, summer workshops designed to teach teachers how to teach computer science and pre-college summer programs to introduce students to science, engineering and computer science. Recitation sections: The core of their plan is the use of student assistants which will enable them to break up large introductory classes into two components. The beginning courses will consist of large, professor led lecture sections twice weekly and much smaller (10-15 students) student assistant led recitation sections thrice weekly. The student assistants will be trained in handling the recitation sections. Such training will include teambuilding and leadership skills and knowing how to recognize problems as they develop. They will also receive support and counselling on how to solve these problems. Role models: The student assistant leaders will also serve as role models for the low division students. They will encourage the assistants to discuss their research work in these recitation sections. Curriculum development: They plan to deal with the deficiencies in their curriculum coverage by encouraging faculty to develop expertise in new areas of teaching and research. A second major curriculum development strategy is to re-orient courses in order to fit the new ACM-Denning action-oriented model of computer science education and the newly emerging ACM Curriculum 1990 guidelines which argue that laboratory work should include exercises in which students modify and explore existing codes. UTEP will upgrade the research productivity of the faculty through the avenues of technical expertise, student assistants, and the acquisition of sufficient equipment, including a network of workstations, and necessary software. These activities will maximize the number of Hispanic students who will choose to pursue advanced degrees and enter the educational or research systems as their career choice.
