Thank you for viewing the Computing Research Association Committee on Widening Participation's (CRA-WP) video highlighting a few of our programs funded through National Science Foundation award #1840724. 

CRA-WP's mission is to widen the participation and improve the access, opportunities, and positive experiences of individuals from populations underrepresented in computing research and education. 

The overarching goal of this project is to increase and sustain participation in computer science research by encouraging members of underrepresented populations to earn advanced degrees in Computer Science and Engineering and to pursue research careers in academia, industry, or national labs.

We encourage you to visit our website to learn more about the many programs and opportunities offered by the Computing Research Association and/or CRA-WP including:

• Career Mentoring Workshops
• CSGrad4US Mentoring Program
• Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates
• Early Career Awards 
• Grad Cohort Workshop for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills 
• Grad Cohort Workshop for Women

You can easily sign up for CRA-WP Updates to keep apprised about upcoming opportunities.

Thanks again for joining us, and we hope that you enjoy the 2022 NSF STEM for All Video Showcase!

Best,

Erik

As a current PhD student returning after 30 years outside of the workforce, I can attest to the value of having strong mentors. I credit a specific mentor with my continued efforts in STEM. How do your workshops impact underrepresented populations? What is the focus of your workshops? How do you determine what your topics will be? Thank you for your efforts.

Hi Karen, thank you for your post.

Our workshops and activities are designed to forward our mission of widening the participation and improving the access, opportunities and positive experiences of individuals underrepresented in computing research and education, including women, people who are Black/African American, Native American/Alaskan Native/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latinx, LGBTQIA, people with disability and veterans (Mission - CRA-WP).

Through our decades of work in this space, we have reached thousands of undergraduate, graduate and early/mid career computing researchers and educators. This page presents some of our program outcomes: CRA-WP Program Infographics - CRA-WP

* DREU participants are more likely to attend graduate school than non-DREU participants

* Mentoring workshop participants report stronger professional skills, greater self-efficacy and stronger professional networks

* Mentoring workshop participants, after ten years, are more advanced in their careers than non-participants

The topics for our mentoring workshops are chosen to help participants build stronger networks, acquire professional skills and see through to the next stage in a research career. We have a resource library: Resource Library - CRA-WP and resources from our mentoring workshops are freely available at The CRA Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP) - CRA-WP, under Programs.

This seems like such a wonderful program and participants' statements clearly reflect that. Thank you for this work and the contributions it makes broadly and to the video showcase. I personally resonate with the importance of mentoring and community-building in supporting graduate students, particularly those who identify with marginalized groups in STEM fields. I'm curious about your sense of how much the computing science field as a whole has begun to adopt some of the practices you apply in your work as part of the norm in graduate education? What opportunities do you see to influence the broader culture of graduate education in computing?

Thanks so much for not only sharing the video presentation, but providing links to your additional resources. I've been exploring mentoring relationships in STEM more recently and am learning a lot along the way. What are you finding as critical components of mentoring programs that lead to the most gains for mentees?

Thank you for your comments and question, Harrison. As part of our programs, CERP (Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline) evaluates the effectiveness of our programs. Participants in our programs really appreciate the ability to interact directly with panelists and mentors, as well as to engage with peers, increasing their sense of belonging and their confidence in their ability to continue in a research career. 

This seems like an amazing project. From the video, it appears that your teams seeks to provide students with rich experiences to prepare them for careers and graduate study in computing. I wonder what type of challenges have you faced with implementing the project.