The Computing Research Association will extend the work of the BPCnet resource to conduct a series of four workshops to involve more departments in the development of meaningful Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) plans. These workshops enable participants to develop departmental BPC plans while receiving real time feedback from BPC experts. These workshops will employ a combination of content delivery, hands-on plan development, and realtime feedback. Once each workshop concludes, participants will have the opportunity to receive additional feedback for refinement of their plans developed during the workshop. Each workshop will be evaluated to assess their efficacy. This project brings together experts who have extensive experience in broadening participation and faculty to help the faculty create plans that will have a meaningful impact on increasing diversity in computing. With the resulting plans, departments and faculty will be able to implement activities that will facilitate pathways for a diverse range of students to careers in computing.
To support computing departments and faculty?s efforts for broadening participation, this project will run a series of four workshops on developing Departmental BPC Plans. These interactive workshops will bring together academic faculty at various levels within a department to learn about the CISE requirements for BPC and give them the space to develop their Departmental BPC Plan. These workshops will be recorded professionally and will be provided as a resource to the broader community. Attending departments of these workshops will be tracked over time using follow-up surveys in an effort to facilitate the continued development and implementation of the Departmental BPC Plans. A network of BPC plan consultants will be available to support the departments and faculty during the plan development process outside of the workshops. Consultants working with departments (or individual PIs) will provide a sustained connection for continued support. Departmental BPC Plans that have been refined and reviewed with a consultant will be approved by the consultant and the BPC Plan Workshops Steering Committee for final upload to BPCnet.org, a resource portal supporting this initiative. By combining the workshops and consultancy activities with the generation of resources for the BPCnet portal, the project will be able to have lasting impact beyond the duration of this award. Effectiveness of the workshops will be evaluated through data collected from the faculty using feedback and follow-up surveys as well as focus groups aimed at measuring the progress made towards creating meaningful BPC plans.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
