Brooklyn College (BC) proposes a project that focuses on female minority students, primarily Black and Hispanic, who make up the majority of the population at Brooklyn College. The image for the project is the "tree that grows in Brookly", illustrating that students can aim high, reaching to meet personal and professional goals, while at the same time, remaining connected to their past, their families, their culture and their roots. Girls are attracted to professions where they feel that they can make a difference, and through this project, they will see that careers in computing can make a difference - through advances in computing technology, they can help analyze their grandmother's mammography images, organize the inventory in their uncle's deli or search for legal briefs to help their neighbor's deportment case. This Bridging project will implement and test a series of interventions aimed at students across six critical years - from junior year in high school through senior year in college. By focusing on preparation, recruitment and retention, the project will emphasize the importance of computer science (CS) in a larger context and provide peer mentors and role models. A broad range of activities, at both high school and undergraduate levels, will be pursued: a Summer Institute to give high school students a chance to explore context-based computing concepts informally, a Computing Preparatory Course to provide high school students with background for college CS classes, Interdisciplinary Seminars to afford undergraduates who are undecided about their major an opportunity to examine computing applied to socially relevant areas, Alternate Pathways into CS to provide a sequence of tracked, application-based introductory programming courses to new undergraduate majors, and early involvement in Undergraduate Research and Community Outreach to show students the purpose for the skills they are developing. A strong, multi-faceted Mentoring Program will create a continuous support system for participants at all stages of the project and will include Student Ambassadors to link BC students to high schools. The expected results will be a collection of proven methods that can be exported to other institutions across New York City and beyond.
