EngageIT: Building Capacity in Community Colleges to Recruit and Retain Underrepresented Students in Computing

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

A diverse, well-educated computing and information technology (CS/IT) workforce is vital to U.S. well-being. The unique inclusive and open-access mission of community colleges makes them crucial points of intervention. The "EngageIT" project at the University of Colorado at Boulder will develop and test a model of professional development (PD) for community college CS/IT faculty that builds their capacity to recruit and retain women and underrepresented minorities. The project will investigate student persistence in CS/IT disciplines to measure the effectiveness of the PD and to empower faculty with program-specific diversity data. This project will consist of three activities: (1) designing a scalable, research-based PD course; (2) implementing this course with two cohorts of faculty; and (3) tracking student persistence in the discipline as a means to evaluate PD efficacy. The project will make use of the National Center for Women & Information Technology's (NCWIT) considerable expertise and network, including research-based recruitment and retention practices, a 1500+ curricula repository for student engagement (EngageCSEdu), a dedicated community college advisory board, and social scientists to support the project. The study will use a mixed methods approach, which will enable triangulation and synthesized data analysis that is unavailable through a simple quantitative or qualitative study. Rubric-based assessments will provide an objective measure of the implementation of the PD for each faculty member. Assessing both pre- and post-PD will account for the different levels of engagement practices the faculty may already be implementing prior to involvement in this project. Research findings will help educators to understand differential student persistence in CS/IT and the role faculty play in the field's diversification, helping to provide more engaging learning environments for diverse students, and leading to a more diverse U.S. technical workforce.