NSF Alliances worked together as part of the “BPC-DP: Developing Shared Measures Among the BPC Community” project to explore and agree on a shared measurement framework. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation as a BPC demonstration project (NSF award 2137842) and was built on prior data collection efforts. The project was led by CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) and SageFox Consulting Group.
The Shared Measures project was completed in four phases. Click on a phase below to learn more.
BPC (“Broadening Participation in Computing”) is about increasing the participation of groups or populations underrepresented in computing and closely related disciplines. The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is committed to BPC and strongly encourages meaningful actions that address the longstanding underrepresentation of various populations including women, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and persons with disabilities in computing and closely-related disciplines. All levels within these groups are relevant, from K-12 to workforce. (See Q36 for more details.)
At all levels across the US computing and information science and engineering workforce, there is underrepresentation of various populations including women, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and persons with disabilities. BPC activities must seek to increase the representation of these groups in the US computing and information science and engineering workforce. Note that BPC activities may include low-income, rural, and other underserved populations in addition to (not in place of) the populations described above. For example, a goal could focus on increasing representation of students who identify as Black or low-income, and every activity aligned with this goal needs to focus on both groups. A goal may not focus only on low-income students. Further reading can be found at the CISE BPC website (https://www.nsf.gov/cise/bpc/).
For Project BPC Plans submitted to NSF, if the solicitation you are responding to has specific details related to this topic, those supersede this FAQ.
CISE has had a longstanding commitment to BPC (see https://www.nsf.gov/od/broadeningparticipation/bp.jsp). CISE recognizes that BPC requires an array of long-term, sustained efforts, and will require the participation of the entire community. Efforts to broaden participation in computing must be action-oriented and must take advantage of multiple approaches to eliminate or overcome barriers. BPC depends on many factors, and involves changing culture throughout academia—within departments, classrooms, and research groups. This change begins with enhanced awareness of barriers and remedies to participation throughout the CISE community, including among principal investigators (PIs), students, and reviewers. BPC may therefore involve a wide range of activities, examples of which include participating in professional development opportunities aimed at providing more inclusive environments, joining various existing and future collective impact programs to helping develop and implement departmental BPC plans that build awareness, inclusion, and engagement, and conducting outreach to groups underrepresented in computing at all levels (K-12, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate).
In 2017, CISE announced a 3-year pilot effort to increase the community’s involvement in BPC. CISE required that BPC plans were included in proposals for certain large awards, notably proposals to the Expeditions in Computing program, plus Frontier proposals to the Cyber-Physical Systems and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) programs. CISE also encouraged for certain other projects, the inclusion of BPC plans in proposals and required the inclusion of BPC plans in awards, notably Medium and Large projects in the core programs of the CISE Divisions of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF), Computer and Network Systems (CNS), and Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS), plus the SaTC program.
Building on this experience, in FY 2022, CISE will require that Medium projects in the above programs include a Project BPC plan at time of submission; and have a meaningful BPC plan at the time of award. Project BPC Plans should help PIs develop their individual awareness, knowledge, resources, and skills in pursuing meaningful BPC activities.
CISE hopes to accomplish several things:
The long-term goal of this pilot is for all segments of the population to have clear paths and opportunities to contribute to computing and closely related disciplines.
Inclusion is a component of BPC. According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities, inclusion is “the active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with diversity—in the curriculum, in the co-curriculum, and in communities (intellectual, social, cultural, geographical) with which individuals might connect—in ways that increase awareness, content knowledge, cognitive sophistication, and empathic understanding of the complex ways individuals interact within systems and institutions” (https://www.aacu.org/making-excellence-inclusive). Thus, given its focus on increasing the participation of people from groups underrepresented in computing, BPC is not the same as inclusion, but inclusion is a key component of BPC.
The BPC Shared Measures project resulted in two sets of measurement templates:
The team also collaborated with Dr. Monica McGill and Dr.Julie Smith of Institute for Advancing Computing Education (CSEdResearch.org) to produce a technical report documenting the process of coming up with a shared measurement framework and lessons learned in the process.