Alliances

Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) is realized in many different ways. One of these ways is through Alliances, which are defined as “broad coalitions of academic institutions of higher learning, K-12 schools, government, industry, professional societies, and other not-for-profit organizations that design and carry out comprehensive programs addressing underrepresentation in the computing disciplines. They have a large regional or national scope. Alliances operate across multiple stages of the academic pipeline and address one or several intended groups that are underrepresented. Collectively, Alliances serve as a national resource for achieving the transformation of computing education.” (source: NSF page on Broadening Participation in Computing).

BPCnet.org tracks BPC Alliances and INCLUDES Alliances that are primarily focused on the domain of computing. This page was prepared in collaboration with the BPC-A Accelerator. The BPC-A Accelerator is a collective of the NSF BPC Alliances to advance the goal of broadening participation in computing by sharing knowledge and maximizing use of the tools, knowledge, and resources available across the Alliances to develop sustainable solutions to address the lack of diversity in computing.

See below for a list of all currently active Alliances. Click the name of each Alliance for more details.

AccessComputing
Principal Investigator: Richard Ladner

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: CNS-2137312

Increasing the participation of people with disabilities in computing fields.

  • A Community of Practice for Computing Educators and Employers to share resources and learn about accessibility.
  • A mentoring community, activities, and research and travel funding for computing students with disabilities.

For more information on AccessComputing visit https://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/.

Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education (AIICE)

Principal Investigator: Alicia Washington

Alliance Type: INCLUDES

Grant number: 2118453

AiiCE aims to promote identity-inclusive strategies to increase diversity in K-16 CS education. This involves systemic change, enhancing knowledge and awareness, supporting academic cultures, and advocating for policy-driven reforms to improve retention and completion rates.

  • Higher Ed: 3C Fellows Professional Development Program, Teaching Assistant Professional Development Course.
  • K-12: Teacher Inquiry Groups, Identity Inclusion Online PD, Identity Inclusive Instructors Summit.
  • All: Byte-sized DEI-J Video Series.

For more information on AIICE, visit https://identityincs.org/.

Alliance Supporting Pacific Impact through Computational Excellence (ALL-SPICE)

Principal Investigator: Helen Turner

Alliance Type: INCLUDES

The NSF INCLUDES Alliance Supporting Pacific Impact through Computational Excellence (ALL-SPICE) proposes efforts to harness the data revolution to support sustainability, economic development, and social justice in the Hawai’i-Pacific region. ALL-SPICE, led by Chaminade University of Honolulu with partners at the University of Texas Austin, Texas Advanced Computing Center, and the University of Hawai’i, will focus on the development of regional data science capacity in support of Hawai’i-Pacific progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). ALL-SPICE will build educational and research capacity in data science for community impact in Hawai’i and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI), adapting data science curriculum for online deployment to reach rural, neighbor island and USAPI participants, enhancing faculty research capacity in data science, developing new undergraduate data science research experiences, and producing new Pacific-focused data science courses for broad deployment across the Alliance. Additionally, ALL-SPICE will curate a Wayfinding to Data (W2D) portfolio of data science training opportunities spanning K-20 and targeting marginalized populations.

For more information on ALL-SPICE, visit https://www.nsfspicealliance.org/.

Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI)

Principal Investigator: Ann Gates

Alliance Type: BPC, INCLUDES

Grant number: CNS 2137791 and HRD 1834620

CAHSI is a national alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions and private and public sector partners committed to collectively advance and empower Hispanics in computing. We accelerate inclusive educational cultures and shape future leaders. Our work focuses on the individual (students and faculty), department, and leadership to achieve systemic change. CAHSI serves as a catalyst for research and institutional capacity building through advocacy, data- and knowledge-informed decision-making, mutually reinforcing activities across collaborative networks, and adoption of research- and evidence-based practices.

Visit CAHSI’s website to access our library and learn about our signature practices and programs: CAHSI-Google Institutional Research program, Allyship, Local REU, Latinas+, CAHSI Student Advocate, CAHSI Student Scholars, and the CAHSI Doctoral Student Network.

For more information on CAHSI, visit https://cahsi.utep.edu/.

 

Computing Research Association Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP)

Principal Investigator: Sandhya Dwarkadas

Alliance Types: BPC

Grant number: 2216270

Our mission is to widen the participation and improve the access, opportunities, and positive experiences of individuals from populations underrepresented in computing research and education.

We run programs for people throughout computing research careers including:

  • Research experiences for undergraduate and master’s degree students.
  • Mentoring workshops and mentoring events for computing researchers in graduate school, early and mid-career in academia, industry, or government labs.
  • An extensive online resource library on our website.

For more information on CRA-WP, visit https://cra.org/cra-wp/.

CSforAll

Principal Investigator: Leigh Ann DeLyser

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2216614

The CSforALL Alliance will activate its membership to implement programs, pathways, policies, or initiatives that result in BPC outcomes for women, black, Hispanic and indigenous students in K-12 educational institutions and OST programs that are age-aligned in the US.

The primary goals of the Alliance are to:

  • (1) Raise awareness of the need to address issues of underrepresentation;
  • (2) Increase the capacity of the CSforALL membership to use examples and research to meet these needs; and
  • (3) Use data to landscape opportunities and measure progress.

For more information on CSforALL, visit https://www.csforall.org/.

Data Alliance on Persistence and Perception in Computing (DAPPIC)

Principal Investigator: Carla Brodley

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2216629

DAPPIC’s goal is to integrate department-level data on enrollment, persistence, course outcomes, retention and graduation, with student-level data on perception and experience. By combining these two data sources, we seek to provide access to multi-level data that university computing departments can use to inform their BPC efforts.

DAPPIC is a collaboration of the Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) at Northeastern University and the Computing Research Association’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CRA CERP). If you are interested in learning more about the CIC’s data collection, please visit https://cic.northeastern.edu. If you are interested in learning about CRA CERP’s data collection, please visit https://cra.org/cerp/data-buddies.

Expanding Computing Education Pathways Alliance (ECEP)

Principal Investigator: Carol Fletcher

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2137834

ECEP is a collective impact alliance dedicated to increasing equitable capacity for, access to, participation in, and experiences of computing education. ECEP state leaders focus on building and sustaining K-14 CS education ecosystems that systematically identify and address disparities in opportunities, outcomes, and representation in computing education. To achieve sustained, systems-level change in a state, ECEP leaders focus on implementing policies, pathways, and practices that advance equity at scale.

  • Building a national infrastructure in people, policy, pathways, and practices.
  • Leveraging states as a unit of change and policy as a mechanism of sustainability.
  • Growing grassroots capacity to create and sustain data systems for tracking BPC.
  • Shifting the narrative from a narrow focus on access and representation to interrogating the systems that perpetuate inequities.
  • Applying a collaborative, multi-sector approach to tackling the root causes of inequities across the CSEd pipeline.

For more information on ECEP, visit https://ecepalliance.org/.

Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences (IAAMCS)

Principal Investigators: Juan Gilbert, Kinnis Gosha, Cheryl Seals

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: NSF BPC-AE: Award No. 2216622

IAAMCS (pronounced ‘i am cs’) serves as a national resource for all African-American computer science students (undergraduate & graduate) and faculty. The objective of IAAMCS is to increase the number of African Americans receiving Ph.D. degrees in computing sciences, promote and engage students in teaching and training opportunities, and add more diverse researchers into the advanced technology workforce.

  • Fellowship Writing Workshop Series – learn about fellowship opportunities, ways to strengthen your personal statements, and how to articulate your research and goals, and get feedback on your essays and research plans.
  • Future Faculty & Research Scientist Mentoring Program – join meetings that focus on the application process, interview preparation, networking for job opportunities, the academic job calendar, offer negotiation, CV optimization, evaluation of multiple job offers, and knowing what jobs to apply to.
  • Paired Mentoring Program – get support at various stages of your college career by connecting with graduate, industry, or academic mentors.

For more information on IAAMCS, visit http://diversitycomplete.com/iaamcs/.

LEAP Alliance

Principal Investigators: Stafford Hood, Charles Isbell, Valerie Taylor

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2137937

Increase the diversity of future leadership in the computing professoriate at research universities as a way to increase diversity in computing.

  • Promoting institutional change in recruitment, admission, retention, professional development, and career choices.
  • Targeting African Americans, Native Americans/Indigenous, Hispanics, and People with Disabilities.

For more information on LEAP Alliance, visit https://cmd-it.org/program/current/leap-alliance/.

National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT)

Principal Investigator: Lucinda Sanders

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: NSF CISE #1725018

NCWIT is a non-profit community of more than 1,600 higher education institutions, companies, nonprofits, and government organizations nationwide working to increase the meaningful and influential participation in computing of persons with marginalized gender identities at the intersections of race/ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, disability status, and other historically marginalized identities — in the field of computing, particularly in terms of innovation and development. NCWIT equips change leaders with resources and tools for taking action in recruiting, retaining, and advancing these individuals from K–12 and higher education through tech industry and entrepreneurial careers.

  • NCWIT Resources – research-backed resources describing practices and techniques for recruiting and retaining people in computing who have been historically excluded.
  • Counselors for Computing – Training counselors on how to encourage all students to choose to learn computing, enabling them to consider pursuing technical career paths.
  • Aspirations in Computing – Awards for high school students and educators in computing, as well as wards for undergraduate and graduate students in computing.

For more information on NCWIT, visit http://www.ncwit.org/.

Researching Equity and Antiracist Learning in CS (REAL-CS)
Principal Investigators: Joanna Goode, Jean Ryoo

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2137956

Increase the number of young women and students of color experiencing culturally responsive and engaging computer science education through co-design efforts with teachers to infuse justice-related topics into a high school curriculum and teacher professional development program (Exploring Computer Science), collaborate with school administrators for equity-oriented leadership, and engage in research with teachers and students.

More links:

For more information on REAL-CS, visit http://www.exploringcs.org/.

Socially Responsible Computing: Promoting Latinx student retention via community engagement in early CS courses

Principal Investigators: Eun-Young Kang, Paul Salvador Inventado, Yu Sun, Zoe Wood, Ilmi Yoon

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2216687

Our alliance aims to transform the early computing experience to motivate and engage students to opt-in to computing. Our alliance targets the retention of Latinx students in computing via curricular activities in early computing courses that help integrate community needs into computing course pedagogy and projects.

We are actively working on developing the publicly accessible version of our curriculum and open call for participants in our faculty learning community, please reach out to the PI or co-PIs listed on the webpage.

For more information on Socially Responsible Computing: Promoting Latinx student retention via community engagement in early CS courses, visit https://www.csudh.edu/src-csu/.

STARS Computing Corps

Principal Investigators: Tiffany Barnes, Edward Dillon, Susan Fisk, Jamie Payton, Ebrahim Randeree, Audrey Rorrer

Alliance Type: BPC

Grant number: 2137338

STARS catalyzes action-oriented academic communities for broadening participation in computing.

  • Propagating evidence-based practices to shift CS experiences in college CS departments to be more equitable and inclusive.
  • Creating a community of faculty and students committed to addressing the exclusion of women, Black, and Hispanic students as computing degree holders.
  • Advancing BPC knowledge with rigorous research/evaluation through research experiences and RESPECT conferences.

For information on STARS Computing Corps, visit https://www.starscomputingcorps.org/.