A Workshop Report
The “Authentic Inclusion of Community Colleges in Broadening Participation in Computing” (AICCBPC) workshop held January 30 through February 1, 2018 brought together 49 participants and organizers from community colleges, universities, and national organizations. The primary goal of this workshop was to brainstorm and strategize about ways to include the diversity of students in community colleges in the national efforts to broaden participation in computing.
The idea for this workshop was conceptualized during the National Science Foundation’s Computer & Information Science & Engineering, Education and Human Resources meeting in Denver, Colorado (March, 2017) where NSF explored the involvement of community colleges by offering sessions such as “Community Colleges as a Diversification Pipeline.” In multiple sessions, participants identified the challenges faced by community colleges that are often overlooked in discussions of underrepresented students in computing fields. The need to highlight and build upon existing innovative transfer models to increase collaboration between high schools, community colleges, and four-year institutions was illustrated.
The AICCBPC workshop was designed to provide a forum for sharing experiences, to empower community colleges to be an integral part of the broadening participation in computing conversation, and to build on efforts already underway to learn about the state of Computer Science and Information Technology at community colleges around the nation. Given that community colleges enroll minorities and women in larger numbers than four-year institutions, it is imperative for both community colleges and four-year institutions to engage in collaborative efforts to broaden the participation of diverse populations in computing and facilitate unobstructed pathways from two-year to four-year institutions. The complexities of the community college landscape require that experts from various backgrounds align to share knowledge and experiences that benefit a collaborative role that community colleges can play with four-year institutions in broadening participation efforts.
View the full conference website.
This project was funded by The National Science Foundation award #1745811.
