NSF Award
2417666
This award extends the current Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance, the LEAP Alliance, which addresses the critical broadening participation challenge of increasing the diversity of the future leadership in the Computing professoriate at research universities as a way to increase diversity across the field. The problem we address 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. Diversifying the computing professoriate is critically important to address because diverse faculty contributes to academia in several important ways. They serve as excellent role models for a diverse study body, bring diverse backgrounds to the student programs and policies developed by the department, and bring diverse perspectives to the research projects and programs as well as the courses that comprise the undergraduate and graduate curricular. Further, key national leadership roles, such as serving on national communities that impact the field of computing, often come from research universities.<br/><br/>The extension builds upon the initial accomplishments and lessons learned of the BPC LEAP Alliance, which was launched in 2021 and consists of 30 unique institutions. The five-year extension 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 plan is to start the Affiliates Program during year three of the extension. 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.<br/><br/>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.
