Scaling an Effective Program for Recruiting and Retaining Women in Undergraduate Computing: NCWIT ES-UP at Scale

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

The "Scaling an Effective Program for Recruiting and Retaining Women in Undergraduate Computing" is a pilot study conducted by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) that will gather evidence to support a subsequent full-scale implementation of the Extension services for Undergraduate Programs (ES-UP) program. The ES-UP program has been shown to be successful in addressing gender imbalance in undergraduate computing. Rather than preparing women to function in an educational system designed for men, ES-UP advances sustained change to attract and retain men and women equally in computing majors. Combined, the departments served by ES-UP over the past eight years have sustained a 6% climb in graduations of women, while national figures remain flat. "Learning Circles" consisting of one former ES-UP client (Guide) and four committed departmental teams will be piloted to determine their effectiveness in scaling the ES-UP to a national level. Learning Circle members will meet regularly via online events throughout the year, learning, sharing, and developing approaches, discussing lessons learned as they implement their solutions, and building a sense of community. The project team will collect data and conduct analysis to understand what works for Learning Circles and how to extend the model more broadly. The team will publish and present the results of the analyses. The result of this work will be a model that will be used to accelerate large-scale reform in the national computing community, leveraging the knowledge and experience of former ES-UP clients in a "train-the-trainer" approach that integrates the critical components of the model, which includes personalized advice, community, and peer knowledge sharing, into an existing infrastructure of expert staff and consultants, tools, and evidence-based resources.