Online Session Locator

Session Description

Free ticketed event
Creating Inclusive Undergraduate Computing Programs with NCWIT's Tech Inclusion Journey Platform

The goal of this workshop is to equip attendees with knowledge and skills to utilize NCWIT’s Undergraduate Tech Inclusion JourneyTM online platform within their home departments to assist with creating an inclusive departmental culture for students of all intersecting backgrounds.

This workshop is designed for faculty, staff, and administrators associated with computing programs. NCWIT works with academic computing programs to facilitate their implementation of strategic, systemic diversity-based change efforts based on their own institutional contexts. In this workshop, the facilitators— research associates from NCWIT’s higher education team--will present the NCWIT Undergraduate Systemic Change Model, which comprehensively illustrates the systemic components of a computing program where change efforts can be focused to recruit and retain a diverse student body, while also fostering and inclusive departmental culture. Facilitators will also interactively demonstrate how attendees can use NCWIT’s new Undergraduate Tech Inclusion JourneyTM online platform within their home departments to facilitate strategic planning processes for their DEI change efforts.

The Undergraduate Tech Inclusion JourneyTM (TIJ) is a unique, research-based framework and software platform that empowers change in higher education institutions to implement systemic, sustainable approaches to create inclusive cultures. It brings together 15+ years of NCWIT research and experience working with institutions of higher education and addresses typical pitfalls of traditional approaches to diversity and inclusion such as overreliance on “diversity training” and other mandatory “compliance” based efforts, use of “piecemeal” or “checkbox” solutions rather than addressing change at a complex systemic level. Instead, the TIJ employs a strategic, collaborative approach that guides departmental change leaders through a structured three-step journey of self-assessment, consensus building on needs and priorities, and guidance for implementation and evaluation. Each step is informed by research in organizational theory, communities of practice, and diversity in technology, and provides clear and applied explanation of social science concepts. The TIJ attends to intersectionality, focusing on dismantling intersecting systems of oppression to make classrooms and departmental culture more equitable and inclusive for a wide range of minoritized student groups. It also encourages users to include a diverse range of stakeholders in self-assessment and strategic planning, and evaluation metrics are embedded in the tool to help organizations assess the impact of change efforts across intersectional demographic groups. By utilizing the TIJ to support the implementation of DEI change efforts in a strategic, systemic manner, faculty, staff, and administrators will be able to recruit, retain, and graduate more intersectionally diverse students in their programs more effectively.
3 hours

Speakers

1. Dr. Jamie Lee Huber Ward

   WEPAN, Inc.

   Jamie Huber Ward is a social scientist and project director with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on issues related to organizational change in higher education; inclusive pedagogy; curriculum reform; post-secondary student experiences; and representations of gender in media. In her role, Jamie works with the HigherEd core team to implement and analyze research projects designed to increase women’s participation in post-secondary computing programs. This includes working with faculty and staff from a variety of collegiate computing programs to facilitate their local implementation of evidence-based recruitment and retention strategies and translating these programs successes into resources accessible to post-secondary computing programs on a nationwide scale. She also engages in project management and strategic planning efforts, and directs the NCWIT ADVANCE partnership. Prior to joining NCWIT, Jamie served in various roles in student affairs administration and as a faculty member in several Gender Studies and Communication Studies departments. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, an M.A. in Psychology from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, an M.A. in Higher Education Administration from the University of Louisville, and a B.A. in Psychology and English from Illinois College.

2. Dr. Christopher Lynnly Hovey

   Christopher Lynnly Hovey is a research scientist for the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and a research at the University of Colorado Boulder. Over the last 16 years, Hovey has served in multiple roles, ranging from a research assistant through project lead, for NSF- and industry-funded research and evaluation projects. These projects investigate issues and solutions for increasing the meaningful participation and improving the experiences of women and other historically underserved groups in associate’s, bachelors, and graduate programs in computing fields. In the past, he has also evaluated programs and interventions in K-12 education that target developing career pathways into computing for diverse students. Hovey’s research investigates two lines of research. First, his work focuses on translating scholarship into practical interventions and evaluating their effectiveness in bolstering diversity, inclusiveness, student learning, and student retention in undergraduate and graduate education. Identifying evidence-based practices is not sufficient; practitioners need to make regular and significant use of them to accomplish social transformation. Therefore, Hovey’s second line of research examines strategies for promoting the widespread adoption and sustained use of these pedagogical, curricular, and organizational innovations among computer and information science faculty and administrators.

3. Dr. Sherri L Sanders

   Sherri L. Sanders: Sherri Sanders serves as the Director of Higher Education Initiatives and BridgeUP STEM and a senior research associate with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on issues within higher education related to gender equity and inclusion; strategic recruitment and retention of underrepresented communities in computing; and sustainable and systemic organizational culture change. As director of higher education initiatives and BridgeUP STEM, Sanders leads a team of social scientists who research and implement strategies for increasing the meaningful and influential participation of girls and women in computing and creating systemic organizational culture change within departments of computing. Within BridgeUP STEM, she leads the NCWIT and Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing team in developing and implementing the first BridgeUP STEM program located within a research institution. Prior to joining NCWIT in 2017, Sanders was a senior-level administrator at The University of Texas at Austin for 29 years serving as an associate dean of students, associate vice president for inclusion and equity, and a clinical associate professor. While at UT Austin, she led campus-wide initiatives including strategic diversity planning, campus climate response, Inclusive faculty recruitment and retention education, and equal opportunity law and policy administration while teaching graduate level classes on college student development theory.

4. S. Kiersten Ferguson

   S. Kiersten Ferguson is a social scientist for National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and a research associate at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her scholarly and teaching interests include diversity planning and implementation, bias response teams, campus culture, organizational change, student development theory, equity and access in higher education, and the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and graduate students. Prior to joining NCWIT Ferguson was a clinical associate professor in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University, as well as a Provost Fellow for Equity and Inclusion. She holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in cultural anthropology and government/international relations and received her Ph.D. in educational administration with a doctoral portfolio in women’s and gender studies and her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from The University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation focused on the experiences of faculty mentoring undergraduate women students in engineering.

5. Sarayu Sundar

   Sarayu Sundar serves as a research associate for National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research interests include examining both the experiences of women and students of color in computing and the various pathways into different types of postsecondary institutions. Prior to joining NCWIT, Sundar held a number of student affairs positions, mostly recently Associate Director of Student Experience at Rice University. She also served as a researcher on the Momentum/BRAID (Building, Recruiting, and Inclusion for Diversity) research team at the University of California Los Angeles. Sundar received both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from the University of California Los Angeles, as well as her M.Ed. in Higher Education Administration and Supervision and B.B.A. in Accounting from the University of Houston.