CS Events

Computer Science Department Colloquium

Putting BPC into Practice: Charting a Course to Aligning your Computing Demographics with those of your University

 

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Tuesday, February 08, 2022, 10:30am

 

Speaker: Carla Brodley, Northeastern University

Bio

Professor Carla E. Brodley is the Dean of Inclusive Computing at Northeastern University, where she serves as the founding Executive Director for the Center for Inclusive Computing, a national initiative funded by Pivotal Ventures, to increase the representation of women graduating with degrees in computing. Dr. Brodley served as Dean of Khoury College from 2014-2021. During her tenure as Dean, the representation of women majoring in computing increased from 19% to 32%. Prior to joining Northeastern, she was a professor of the Department of Computer Science and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Tufts University (2004-2014) and on the faculty of the School of Electrical Engineering at Purdue University (1994-2004). A fellow of the ACM, AAAI and AAAS, Dr. Brodley’s interdisciplinary machine learning research led to advances not only in computer science, but in other areas including remote sensing, neuroscience, digital libraries, astrophysics, content-based image retrieval of medical images, computational biology, chemistry, evidence-based medicine, and predictive medicine. Dr. Brodley’s numerous leadership positions include having served as program co-chair of the International Conference on Machine Learning, co-chair of AAAI, co-chair of CRA-WP, and associate editor of JAIR, JMLR, and PAMI. She was a member of the DSSG, and she served on the boards of International Machine Learning Society, the AAAI Council, and ISAT. She is currently on the CRA Board of Directors, and on the Board of Trustees of the Jackson Laboratory.

Location : Via Zoom

Event Type: Computer Science Department Colloquium

Abstract: For the last two decades professors, non-profits, philanthropists, NSF and other agencies have been working to broaden participation in computing (BPC) in higher-ed. Progress has been made, but often it is incremental and takes place in small pockets. At the same time, booming enrollments, college budget models, and other institutional factors frequently stand in the way of implementing systemic changes and work at cross purposes to BPC efforts. Launched in 2019 with funding from Pivotal Ventures LLC, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda French Gates, the Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) is working in partnership with colleges and universities across the country to increase the representation of women – of all races and ethnicities – in computing. Today, the CIC is engaged with 22 partner schools – Rutgers among them – with the goal of identifying and removing their specific institutional barriers. Partner schools receive grant funding as well as technical advising and data collection and visualization. In her talk, Dr. Carla Brodley, the CIC’s Executive Director and former dean of Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences, will explore the most common institutional barriers the CIC is seeing across its portfolio, and will dig into the barriers most relevant to Rutgers. She will discuss the concrete measures that can be taken to address barriers, such as creating a BA in computing, making CS1 a general education requirement, handling the distribution of prior computing experience in the intro sequence, and making CS+X actually work. Dr. Brodley will make the case that, if we want to move the national needle, we must pay close attention to issues of how to attract students to computing once they are already at university, in addition to the traditional focus on retention. As part of the talk, Dr. Stone will describe the specific actions Rutgers is taking to remove institutional barriers to BPC.

Organization

Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences

Contact  Matthew Stone

Zoom recording: https://rutgers.zoom.us/rec/share/Rdm0niOWWy3ipW1pnU9hPmpn3Td95AXcW4TtbA3Kni1iBoHdBKBxAeaVoaFUkASE.AriPvEDwNurEjfGW Password: cbX@3VE1