Program Summary

Empowering Leadership: Computing Scholars of Tomorrow Alliance Program Summary

Minority undergraduate and graduate scholars in the computing disciplines in the U.S. are faced with multiple challenges. All too few and far between, they are scattered among majority institutions where they not only experience the pressures of university life, similar to all of their fellow students, but they are most often the only minority student in their classes, or one of very few. Their network of formal and informal resources, support, and encouragement, so critical to all students, is significantly smaller, and less robust. Add to that the possibility of having come from a high school that did not prepare them well, and losing this student, a priceless human resource, becomes a serious possibility. Students faced with these challenges make choices to leave their computing departments for more welcoming environments or to leave college altogether. Even those that graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computing may have had such a painful journey that they are highly unlikely to consider graduate school, and another opportunity for diversifying the professoriate and national leadership has been lost. The goal of the Empowering Leadership: Computing Scholars of Tomorrow Alliance (EL Alliance) is to increase the number of students from groups with long-standing underrepresentation that receive undergraduate and graduate degrees in the computing disciplines. To do this, EL will engage the computing community in developing and implementing innovative methods to improve retention. The EL Alliance will develop a national network of colleagues deeply committed to the success of these students and faculty. The leadership and partners of the EL Alliance are wholly unmatched in this country in their collective diversity and accomplishments, and include leaders who will serve as mentors, speakers, and role models, as well as a network of professionals who will provide access to research and mentoring resources, academic and career opportunities. The EL Alliance will broker opportunities for students, including internships, conference participation, and summer research programs. The leading institutions of the EL Alliance have led nationally recognized programs for minority scholars for three decades, and include Rice University (U.); Boston U.; U. of California, Berkeley; U. of Texas, Austin; and Southern Illinois U. at Carbondale, with third-party evaluation by the U. of Colorado, Boulder.

Intellectual Merit: The EL Alliance will implement and test several interrelated networking and mentoring activities to learn how the leaders in computing disciplines can better serve our underrepresented minority students at the nation's top-rated research universities. It will examine the effects on retention and promotion of a national support network; it will assess the impact of multi-institutional local and online community activities to encourage computing graduate education; and it will evaluate the effects of annual meetings with national leaders on systemic change to institutional culture.

Broader Impact: The EL-Alliance has the potential to directly impact hundreds of the finest underrepresented minority students in the country- encouraging, preparing, and retaining them as they pursue degrees in computing disciplines. The success of these individuals, as well as the success of the EL Alliance, will serve as a model for the establishment of a strong community that maximizes the energy of a committed Alliance with the availability of new technologies to reach, inspire, and support isolated minority students. The EL Alliance will add partners, develop proposals for additional support for minority scholars, and engage industry representatives as means of reaching a broader community. A national network of universities will work to implement systemic change throughout the nation’s top research institutions.

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last edited on 2007-09-18 11:54 AM