Experience of administering our first S-STEM program to broaden participation in computer science

This paper documents the findings of our analysis of the implementation of our six-year NSF S-STEM scholarship program. One major finding was that, for underrepresented students to major in computer science, knowing the major existed and understanding the nature of the program were the most important factors. Also, the academic support system and hands-on nature of the major had a significant impact on scholarship recipients’ persistence in the major. Evidence demonstrated that scholarship recipients had a 10%+ higher year-to-year persistence rate from their freshmen to sophomore year than that of all computer science students of the same entering classes. For all computer science students, college computer science major GPAs were not strongly correlated with their high school GPAs, financial need, or ACT math scores. This paper also presents lessons learned and resulting recommendations for future new scholarship administrators, as our lessons can likely be applied to other grants that recruit and deal with underrepresented groups.