The CIC partners with universities to identify and remove the—often unintentional—barriers that prevent students from discovering and thriving in computing education. To remove these barriers, CIC Partner Schools implement evidence-based, systemic, and sustainable interventions that don’t require ongoing funding.
Some students hit campuses and they’ve never, ever programmed. And we have students …that have been programming since they were five or six years old. We have this broad depth of diversity, not just in [race] or religion or politics or gender, but also the level of understanding that comes into the major.
Shana Watters
Teaching Professor, University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering
Our methodology
Each engagement with a university begins with diagnosis. We conduct a 360-degree site visit (ideally in person) during which we meet with department leadership, administrators, faculty, advisors, TAs, and students. The CIC then documents our findings and our recommendations in a Site Visit Memo.
From there, we work with schools to develop multi-year work plans and budgets. After launch, we support the school’s implementation efforts every step of the way. Each school has an assigned Program Manager (computing faculty and BPC expert), gets access to our roster of Technical Advisors, and is invited to participate in the CIC’s learning community.
The CIC has analyzed data and patterns across the 110+ institutions where we have worked at the undergraduate and graduate levels and identified the 11 interventions that consistently and quickly lead to a more inclusive and equitable environment for students. These ten interventions fall into three categories:
- changes to the introductory course sequence;
- changes to student support; and
- changes to the major and graduate admissions pathways.
The CIC works with each Partner School to collect the data needed to understand the school’s context and track the impact of the selected interventions. Data collected include:
- enrollment and pass/fail/withdraw outcomes in the introductory computing sequence;
- declared computing majors; and
- computing degree completions.
All data are disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity (as defined by IPEDS), major, and transfer status (both internal and external).
We perform extensive analysis on the interventions we support, often in collaboration with CIC consultants and other technical experts. We publish in highly refereed journals and conferences to promote widespread understanding and implementation of systemic changes that foster inclusive computing environments.
The CIC is continuously working with national foundations and philanthropists to support the implementation efforts of our Partner Schools. As funds become available, we issue open requests for proposals, inviting schools to apply for funding.
In collaboration with our Partner Schools, we also regularly apply for funding from the National Science Foundation and other public sources.
Throughout the year, the CIC hosts online Learning Sessions that are open to all. A typical Learning Session explores a specific intervention, highlighting how different Partner Schools have implemented the intervention given their institutional context. You do not have to be a CIC Partner School to participate.
I really found a joy for the clean organization of code and how systematic it was. As a creative, I found it really exciting that I could turn imagined ideas into dynamic programs, and we just kept on building those programs to be more complex throughout the quarter.
Chloe Cartier
Student, University of Washington Seattle
110
current partner schools: 60+ undergraduate and 50+ graduate
10
Systemic and sustainable interventions for a more inclusive undergraduate computing program
60+
Partner Schools receiving funding to support data collection + analysis via 9 interactive dashboards with peer comparisons