2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 189: A Mentor’s Reflection on Challenges of Practice in a Scholarship Program for Lower-Income Computing Students

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

This paper describes an NSF S-STEM-funded scholarship program, representing a collaborative five-year grant project among three prominent universities in the Southeast region of the United States. Its primary objective is to support dedicated scholars in graduating and finding a professional pathway. Each institution recruited a cohort of 15-20 scholars annually for three years. The project offers scholarships and provides curricular and co-curricular support to academically talented but financially challenged students in the computing disciplines, including Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Information Technology majors, starting from their junior years. The program aims to impact 150 scholars, most of whom are underrepresented in computing. Scholars receive support throughout their graduation and beyond should they pursue graduate studies in a STEM discipline at any of the three participating institutions.

While the previous section highlights the basic program structure and how the program is intended to work, there are more subtleties and challenges to achieving these programmatic objectives. We think that more institutional programs should include reflections by those who carry out the program to help reveal the nuances, challenges, lessons learned, and strategies associated with the practice. In other work, we have documented student impacts through surveys, interviews, and observations [redacted]. In this paper, we highlight the reflections of a key personnel practitioner to reveal the challenges that emerge once the plans are being carried out.

While the paper is not organized by a formal research question, the lead author’s reflections were organized to answer a question of practice. The overarching question being answered in the following reflections is: How can mentorship be executed effectively, in light of various constraints?

We investigate challenges of time and quality individual mentorship at scale. Our reflections can help other similar programmatic efforts think strategically and collaboratively about how to solve collective problems.

Authors

Mrs. Tiana Solis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0036-1124 Florida International University [biography]

Tiana Solis is an instructor and a part-time Ph.D. student at Florida International University. She received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from SUNY (State University of New York) Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York.

Her research and instructional interests include student access and success in computing, Diversity Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education.
Dr. Stephen Secules http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3149-2306 Florida International University [biography]

Stephen is an Assistant Professor Engineering and Computing Education at Florida International University. He has a prior academic and professional background in engineering, having worked professionally as an acoustical engineer. He has taught a number of courses on design, sociotechnical contexts, education, and learning. He conducts research on equity and culture in engineering education and supports undergraduate and graduate student researchers through the Equity Research Group.
Ms. Nivedita Kumar http://orcid.org/https://0009-0000-8354-9776 Florida International University [biography]

Nivedita is pursuing her Ph.D. in Engineering & Computing Education at Florida International University. She has a computer science and engineering background as well as K-12 teaching. She thinks about creating an inclusive learning environment using critical and feminist frameworks in undergraduate engineering and computing classrooms.
Mrs. Jacqueline Faith Sullivan University of Central Florida [biography]

Since 2012, Jackie Sullivan (MSEnvE), has been an Adjunct Instructor at UCF (Orlando) in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS) and has instructed the first year engineering students since 2015. Ms. Sullivan worked in consulting engineerin
Dr. Michael Georgiopoulos University of Central Florida [biography]

Michael Georgiopoulos received the Diploma in EE from the National
Technical University in Athens, his MS degree and Ph.D. degree in EE
from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, in 1981, 1983 and
1986, respectively. He is currently a Professor in the Department of EECS
at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. From September 2011 to June 2012 he served as the Interim Assistant Vice President of Research at the Office of Research and Commercialization. Since July 2012 he is serving as the Interim Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

His research interests lie in the areas of Machine Learning and applications with
special emphasis on neural network and neuro-evolutionary algorithms,
and their applications. He has published more than 60 journal papers
and more than 170 conference papers in a variety of conference and
journal venues. He has been an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks from 2002 to 2006, and an Associate Editor of the Neural Networks journal from 2006 to 2012. He has served as the Technical Co-Chair of the IJCNN 2011.
Dr. Mark Allen Weiss Florida International University [biography]

Mark Allen Weiss is Distinguished University Professor, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Engineering and Computing, and Associate Director in the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University

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