Welcome Letter to EL Alliance Students — Let Us Hear from You

Sent via email to EL Alliance students

Dear Empowering Leadership Alliance Students,

I am writing you to tell you how delighted I am that you have joined the Empowering Leadership (EL) Alliance. We have a strong, diverse community of individuals and organizations that you can connect with as you pursue your studies and/or research, and they are greatly interested in seeing you succeed. We are also interested in hearing from you, to help us strengthen the computing community.

As you probably know, the idea behind the ELA is that underrepresented minority students at research institutions often do not have a local support network that is so vital to everyone's success. In my work here at Rice over the years, I've known many students who are very talented but who do not get the encouragement that they need to succeed to their full potential. This can result in two unfortunate consequences: 1) many students as undergraduates migrate to the other side of campus, to social sciences or the humanities, or 2) those who graduate with a bachelor's degree in computing may have had such a painful experience that they are unlikely to consider graduate school. In both cases, another opportunity for national leadership in computing has been lost.

One student in particular comes to mind. He came to Rice as an undergraduate from a weak urban high school. Because of under-preparation and the level of competition at Rice, the student struggled a bit in some of his undergraduate courses. I had him in my classes, got to know him well, realized his talent, and encouraged him to go to graduate school. He excelled there, excels in industry, and is an extremely well-respected scientist. This minority scientist easily could have been lost without the encouragement and advocacy he received.

I want to say this to you: you clearly have talent or you would not have been accepted by a competitive research institution. You have high goals for yourself or you wouldn't have accepted the challenge of a competitive program. Don't give up on meeting those challenges.

I'd like to hear from any of you who have something that you'd like to tell me about your or others' experiences at your university. Do you have someone that encouraged you? Did you feel that your high school or undergraduate (for graduate students) preparation was weaker than most of your colleagues? If so, how did you overcome this preparation? Have you been frustrated by your experiences with faculty? Are there things that you wish your university or department would do differently? We've created a space on the EL Alliance Website where you can easily post your answer to these questions, or tell us about other issues that you are thinking about (anonymously if you wish, or provide contact information so I can reply to you). This will become a valuable resource for those working nationally in broadening participation in computing through the EL Alliance. After many, many years of working in this area, the nation still struggles with issues in broadening participation-you can help provide solutions through your suggestions and by sharing your experiences.

To write to me, go to http://www.empoweringleadership.org.

I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Richard Tapia
Principal Investigator, EL Alliance

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last edited on 2008-05-26 1:27 PM