CRA-W/CDC Alliance Broadens Participation in Computing

Since 1994, the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) has offered the Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates (DREU) program to increase gender diversity in the computing research community. DREU gives undergraduate women the experience of conducting summer research with a professor of computer science or computer engineering (CSE). In 2006, CRA-W joined with the Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) to form an alliance with the goal of increasing participation of underrepresented minority women and men in CSE doctoral programs. This paper documents the CRA-W/CDC Alliance’s progress toward that goal in the DREU program. We find that deliberate efforts to recruit underrepresented minorities into the DREU program are meeting with success.

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