EAGER: CRA-W Programs for Partnerships in the BPCnet Pilot

Computing Research Association, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The Computing Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) proposes a project to pilot mechanisms that allow individual computer science and engineering (CSE) researchers to partner with its most successful flagship programs: Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU), Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU), and Discipline-Specific Workshops (DSWs). These programs have helped to increase the numbers and successes of women and members of underrepresented groups who earn advanced degrees and pursue CSE research careers in academia, industry, or national labs. To date, they have been run with a relatively small group of dedicated volunteers from the CSE research community. Now CRA-W aims to expand the reach of those programs by involving more CSE researchers as partners. The proposal is in response to and in alignment with the effort undertaken by the Computer and Information Systems and Engineering (CISE) Directorate to increase and support the broadening participation in computing (BPC) activities among more of its awardees (NSF DCL 17-110). CRA-W's DREU, CREU and DSW programs have operated successfully and at-scale for many years. This work will engage a broader set of CISE-funded researchers in their operation. A researcher on a CISE-funded project , for example, could partner to send and/or receive a DREU student for a summer research project, or to support a CREU research team from their own university or a neighboring university, college or community college, or to host or contribute in some substantive way to the organization of a new DSW. This project will prepare the programs and their operational infrastructure (e.g. applications and management software) for the greater scale (both operationally and in terms of evaluation) that the new CISE effort is expected to require. This award is co-funded by NSF INCLUDES, which focuses on catalyzing the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) enterprise to collaboratively work for inclusive change. 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.