BPC-AE: Institute for African Americans in Computing Sciences (iAAMCS) National Network

This award extends the BPC Alliance Diversifying Leadership in the Professoriate (LEAP). LEAP is led by the University of Chicago and addresses the critical challenge of increasing the diversity of computing faculty at research universities as a way to increase diversity across the field. To meet this goal, LEAP supports institutional cohorts strategically designed to build community among similar institution types and identify key practices in supporting students underrepresented in computing across different organizational contexts.

This extension will build upon lessons learned by these cohorts and continue to refine strategies for increasing diversity in the computing professoriate. The extension will also establish an Affiliates Program to share best practices and lessons learned across LEAP cohorts and new affiliate member institutions.

The problem the LEAP Alliance addresses is stark and straight-forward: only 5.3% of the faculty (tenured, tenure track, teaching, research, instructors, and postdocs) at PhD-granting universities are from the following underrepresented communities: Black or African-American, Hispanic, American Indian/Alaska Native, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. This extension builds upon the initial accomplishments and lessons learned and entails two main activities: (1) the continuation and refinement of the LEAP Alliance strategies for increasing diversity in the computing professoriate and (2) the establishment of an Affiliates Program for strong cross-dissemination of good practices and lessons learned between the four cohorts and the affiliate member institutions.

The shared purpose and broad vision of the LEAP Alliance entails three main approaches: (1) increase the diversity of PhD graduates from the Institutions that are the top producers of computing faculty; (2) increase the exposure of academic careers at the institutions that already have good diversity in their PhD graduates; and (3) increase the retention of undergraduate students from underrepresented communities at the institutions that send students to doctoral programs.

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.