Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Department

Computer Science (HMC)

Publication Date

3-3-2023

Abstract

Despite an increasing number of successful interventions designed to broaden participation in computing research, there is still significant attrition among historically marginalized groups in the computing research pipeline. This experience report describes a first-of-its-kind Undergraduate Consortium (UC; https://aaai-uc.github.io/about) that addresses this challenge by empowering students with a culmination of their undergraduate research in a conference setting. The UC, conducted at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), aims to broaden participation in the AI research community by recruiting students, particularly those from historically marginalized groups, supporting them with mentorship, advising, and networking as an accelerator toward graduate school, AI research, and their scientific identity. This paper presents our program design, inspired by a rich set of evidence-based practices, and a preliminary evaluation of the first years that points to the UC achieving many of its desired outcomes. We conclude by discussing insights to improve our program and expand to other computing communities.

Comments

Originally published in Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, Vol. 1, by the Association for Computing Machinery, 2023.

Rights Information

© 2023 James C Boerkoel and Mehmet Ergezer

Terms of Use & License Information

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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