Student and Employee Support

This page has resources that departments can utilize to build a supportive community for students, make computing majors equitable, and ensure faculty have opportunities for professional development.

Actions To Take

Supporting underrepresented students and employees by partnering with on campus affinity groups, providing funding to attend BPC-focused conferences, and implementing equitable policies, promote broadening participation in computing.

Build a Community to Support Students

Create peer-mentoring programs for undergraduate and graduate students, using NCWIT’s resource based on researched practices. Faculty should provide support to sustain peer-mentoring groups.
Partner with existing campus affinity groups. Your campus may have a chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE), the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), or the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
Create on-campus student affinity groups. ACM and NCWIT created a resource to sustain affinity groups. Although the resource created by ACM and NCWIT is specifically for Women in Computing (WIC) groups, all cautions and recommendations listed are relevant for all affinity groups.
Fund travel to BPC focused conferences to allow students to create community with other students from their institutions, potential mentors, and the wider computing community. Some relevant conferences are:

Make Computing Majors Equitable for Students with no Prior Computing Related Education

Revise introductory CS courses if they assume prior CS knowledge. Consider creating a path into the major for students who did not have an opportunity to take CS courses prior to declaring CS as their majors.
Encourage instructors to apply the Transparency in Learning and Teaching project (TILT Higher Ed) framework. TILT contains strategies to make small but impactful changes to assignments and has benefited underrepresented and first-generation college students.
Adopt peer-reviewed homework assignments hosted by Engage CS Edu for CS0, CS1, Data Structures, and Discrete Math. Posted assignments have been reviewed by BPC experts and apply best practices for BPC.

Provide Professional Development Opportunities for Faculty

Provide internal mentors for new faculty. Utilize the University of Michigan’s different structures for mentorship programs and related resources for faculty who are providing and receiving advice and advice specific to supporting new faculty.
Use the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Eminent Scholar Mentoring Program to identify senior academics to serve as external mentors to junior faculty. External mentors can help junior faculty build their network of mentors, collaborators, and sponsors.
Provide funding for or offer to reimburse faculty for their travel to computing-specific workshops or professional development training. Below are some computing-specific workshops and professional development trainings:
- The Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT) annual Academic Careers Workshop, for those early in their academic careers.
- The Computing Research Association’s Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP) Career Mentoring Workshops (CMW), for those in the early or mid stages of their careers in academia, industry, or at government labs.
The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) is “an independent professional development, training, and mentoring community of faculty, postdocs, & graduate students from over 450 colleges and universities.” Dr. Rockquemore, founder of NCFDD and co-author of “The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure — Without Losing Your Soul” provides context for the need for supporting Black faculty members (Jaschik, 2008).