2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The development of the computing field creates a need for a robust and skilled computing workforce. However, there is a dearth of postsecondary students in computing majors or disciplines. This project, funded by the NSF DUE/HSI Program, is focused on developing artificial intelligence (AI) courses and an interdisciplinary certificate that will expose community college students to AI and lead to the development of a degree program in AI. The project aims to serve the national interest by increasing community colleges’ (CC) capacity to attract and train students in AI, specifically at a Hispanic-Serving Community College (HSCC). This four-year project is a collaboration between a community college, a university partner, a non-profit organization, industry partners, evaluators, and social scientists to more fully understand how to implement, assess, and expand computing pathways, particularly in the CC space and for a diverse student population.

The main objectives for the project include developing and implementing an interdisciplinary AI certificate at the HSCC. As a continuation of the project, the research team employed a phenomenological study, informed by computing identity development theory (Lunn et al, 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2022) and Hispanic-Servingness frameworks (Garcia et. al., 2019), to conduct semi-structured interviews to learn about their development. Thus far, the team has interviewed 19 students from a range of majors (i.e., data analytics, cybersecurity, and philosophy) and various background demographics (i.e., race, ethnicity, age, income, education-level).

Students were inspired to pursue courses and the computing certificate for career advancement or re-skilling purposes. Students found applications for their new-found skills in computing, such as coding, in their jobs and the jobs that they strive for in the future. Finally, throughout the coursework, students were often affirmed in their interests and provided opportunities to demonstrate knowledge from certificate course content. We found that students were recognized by their family, friends, and coworkers as computing people. Students’ broad support systems (e.g., faculty, friends, coworkers) reaffirmed their learning, aspirations, and identities within computing.

When asked about elements of Hispanic-servingness, students within the study were able to articulate several structures for servingness and validating experiences within structures (e.g. compositional diversity of students/faculty, general support groups). However, beyond compositional diversity, students did not describe other structures for servingness (e.g. mission, values, engagement with Latinx community) and reported some positive improvements of non-academic outcomes (self-concept), but not to others (critical consciousness, social justice orientation).

These findings are significant in thinking about how the HSCC AI certificate is structured as well as its delivery to students. Our findings highlight the need for the courses to be accessible to HSCC students who may be working full-time and in search of opportunities to add to their skillsets or explore new career possibilities. In addition, our findings suggest that there may be opportunities to consider how elements of Hispanic-servingness could be more integrated with efforts to improve computing identity within the AI certificate at this institution.