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Impact of an Emerging Scholars/Peer-Led Team Learning Program on the Recruitment of Undergraduate Women and Underrepresented Minorities into Computer Science and Mathematics

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Women in Engineering Division (WIED) Technical Session 8

Tagged Division

Women in Engineering Division (WIED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

21

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43465

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/43465

Download Count

173

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Paper Authors

biography

Rita Manco Powell University of Pennsylvania

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Rita Manco Powell received her Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. She has worked for over 20 years in Penn Engineering, first in the Department of Computer and Information Science and recently in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, to develop programs and initiatives to recruit women and underrepresented minorities into computer science and to retain them. Powell was Co-PI for the 2020 NEXT Grand Prize awarded by the National Center for Women & Information Technology to the Computer and Information Science Department of the University of Pennsylvania for recruiting and retaining women. Powell is the co-founder of the Penn Emerging Scholars Program.

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Henry Towsner University of Pennsylvania

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Henry Towsner received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 2008 from Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He co-founded the Penn Emerging Scholars Program to improve recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented minorities by the computer science and mathematics departments.

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Brett Frankel University of Pennsylvania

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Brett Frankel received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 2016 from the University of Pennsylvania. After an instructionally-focused postdoctoral position at Northwestern University, he returned to Penn as a senior lecturer. Dr. Frankel was a 2009-2010 Fulbright fellow to Budapest, Hungary studying mathematics and mathematics pedagogy, and a 2017-2018 Project NExT fellow. He served as a graduate assistant to the Penn Emerging Scholars Program, and co-founded the Northwestern Emerging Scholars Program to improve female retention in pipeline courses for the mathematics major.

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Abstract

In 2018 women, Blacks and Latinx students accounted for 19.9, 9 and 11%, respectively, of undergraduate degrees in computer science (CS). Black students were awarded 5% of degrees in math and Latinx students 11%. (NSF 2021). This project studied the impact of an Emerging Scholars Program (ESP), a Peer Led Team Learning program with the goal of recruiting women and underrepresented minorities into math and CS. A collaboration between the Mathematics and CS Departments was established in 2013 at a research university. Freshman and sophomores with undeclared college majors were actively recruited. Workshops led by peer leaders and conducted weekly focused on collaborative problem solving. Program outcomes were assessed quantitatively by the proportion of participants choosing CS or Math programs following project participation, and qualitatively by surveying the impact of the program in participants' own words. 384 students with undeclared majors participated in the ESP between 2013 and 2020, including 52.6% female, 18.5% Black and Latinx. Majors or minors in CS or Mathematics were chosen by 65% of 147 non-minority males, 77% of 35 minority males, 63% of 166 non-minority females and 41% of 36 minority females. A larger percentage of underrepresented minority respondents (67%), as compared to all respondents (26%), credited PESP with helping them connect to peers in math and CS classes (p< 0.001). Respondents reported that ESP introduced them to new ways of thinking and a variety of areas of CS and math. They formed friendships, benefitted from peer leader mentoring, and became part of a math and CS community. ESP was particularly effective in recruiting minority and female students. Problem solving with peers demonstrated that CS and Math are collaborative activities focusing more on problem solving and algorithmic thinking than programming or solving equations. Future efforts addressing the needs of minority female students are needed.

Powell, R. M., & Towsner, H., & Frankel, B. (2023, June), Impact of an Emerging Scholars/Peer-Led Team Learning Program on the Recruitment of Undergraduate Women and Underrepresented Minorities into Computer Science and Mathematics Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43465

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015