BPC-AE: Advancing Diversity-Fueled Innovation by Extending National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Resources & Systemic Change into New Audiences

The University of Colorado will extend the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) BPC Alliance to broaden participation in computing with a focus on those marginalized by gender via a research-based national effort to enact systemic long-lasting change. Computing is the vanguard of American innovation and a key driver of the nation’s economic growth.

Computation is fundamental to advances in healthcare, national security, and nearly every STEM discipline. NCWIT was founded in 2004 to ensure that the perspectives and contributions of those who identify as women are meaningfully represented at all levels of computing. Every woman has multiple intersecting identities, including race, ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, religion, and ability status.

Implicit and explicit beliefs about what women of different identities can, should, and do contribute emerge into everyday practices and implicit policies about how women are to be treated. These beliefs create disparities for women in computing, including lower likelihood of being promoted, significant pay gaps, continued discrimination, and higher quit rates.

Intersections with other marginalized identity categories exacerbate women’s comparatively limited access to social and economic opportunities and capital.

NCWIT provides social science-based interventions for change leaders in postsecondary computing departments by reshaping the ways in which they consider social structures, data and evaluation, recruitment and retention practices, and the institutionalization of practices. NCWIT has developed, rigorously evaluated, and extensively deployed interventions aimed at supporting sustained institutional transformation.

With this project, NCWIT will extend its efforts to diversify all computing disciplines, while adding a special focus on rapidly advancing research subfields. The alliance will expand participation in department-focused systemic change initiatives, including (1) the Tech Inclusion Journey® (TIJ), an assessment- and decision-support tool that teams use to build shared vision, assess strengths and needs within their units, and then identify and adapt appropriate actions to their local contexts, conditions, and resources; (2) a guided Learning Series for Postsecondary Researchers, Teaching Faculty, Teaching Assistants, and Department Leaders; and (3) Cohort-based Learning Circles, a peer-to-peer approach to learning about BPC systemic change and its implementation.

The project also (4) brings together a growing membership of more than 650 postsecondary computing departments in virtual and in-person convenings and (5) provides freely available, professionally designed research-based materials that explain BPC concepts and practices in an easily digested and shareable manner. As a national resource, NCWIT develops approaches that interrupt inequities in social systems by altering policy, everyday practices, decision-making, beliefs, and norms by empowering individuals to become change leaders in their organizations.

Institutionalizing systemic change in academic computing will lead to equity and greater well-being for women, gender-queer, and nonbinary individuals of all intersectional identities; improved computing education for all students; better trained teaching faculty and teaching assistants; a highly qualified, diverse, computing workforce to advance the economy, health care, national security, and other computing-dependent STEM fields; and computing research fueled by diversity in influential, rapidly advancing fields.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.