Partnership for Expanding "Exploring Computer Science" (PEECS)

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) proposes a planning grant to build the Partnership for Expanding "Exploring Computer Science" (PEECS) with the goal of increasing the number of underrepresented minority and female students from San Diego County that graduate from high school interested in and prepared to pursue college majors in computer science and related fields. PEECS was inspired by the BPC Alliance, "Into the Loop," which introduced a new course, "Exploring Computer Science" (ECS), in the Los Angeles Unified School District. ECS is an introductory course that could be a steppingstone to Computer Science Principles, the proposed new Advanced Placement (AP) course. These two courses have the potential to transform high school education in computing. The CS Principles course is being piloted at UC San Diego this year. Together with the facts that "Into the Loop" personnel live in the San Diego region, there are close ties between the UCLA and UCSD campuses, UCSD Computer Science is already involved in revamping their freshman curriculum, and UCSD's San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) has a well-established technology and computational science professional development program for pre-college teachers (SDSC TeacherTECH), this puts San Diego at the right time and place for a major overhaul of its high school computer science programs. PEECS proposes to pave the way for a successful expansion and adaptation of ECS into a new region, San Diego County. There, multiple school districting structures, policies, processes, and academic community cultures present their own new challenges to change. Experiences gained in adapting the ECS program to the diverse needs of the San Diego region will provide valuable lessons as the wider dissemination of ECS and CS Principles goes forward. This planning grant will bring together the important stakeholders to develop the necessary partnerships and directions for this effort.