Ten Years toward Equity: Preliminary Results from a Follow-Up Case Study of Academic Computing Culture

Abstract

Just over 10 years ago, we conducted a culture study of the Computer Science Department at the flagship University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the top five computing departments in the country. The study found that while the department placed an emphasis on research, it did so in a way that, in conjunction with a lack of communication and transparency, devalued teaching and mentoring, and negatively impacted the professional development, education, and sense of belonging of the students. As one part of a multi-phase case study spanning over a decade, this manuscript presents preliminary findings from our latest work at the university. We detail early comparisons between data gathered at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005 and our most recent pilot case study, a follow-up research project completed in 2016. Though we have not yet completed the full data collection, we find it worthwhile to reflect on the pilot case study data we have collected thus far. Our data reveals improvements in the perceptions of undergraduate teaching quality and undergraduate peer mentoring networks. However, we also found evidence of continuing feelings of isolation, incidents of bias, policy opacity, and uneven policy implementation that are areas of concern, particularly with respect to historically underrepresented groups. We discuss these preliminary follow-up findings, offer research and methodological reflections, and share next steps for applied research that aims to create positive cultural change in computing.

Who Is Writing About Women in STEM in Higher Education in the United States? A Citation Analysis of Gendered Authorship

“…women students and faculty, including recruitment and retention (Blackburn, 2017). These studies explore everything from student motivation (Graziano et al, 2012;Smith et al, 2012;Chumbley et al, 2015;Talley and Ortiz, 2017;Leaper and Starr, 2018), self-concept (Sax et al, 2015;Koul et al, 2016;Morton and Parsons, 2018), self-efficacy (Dugan et al, 2013;Verdín and Godwin, 2018), and identity (Robnett et al, 2015;Beals, 2016) to biases (Handley et al, 2015;LaCosse et al, 2016;Moss-Racusin et al, 2018), stereotypes (Cheryan et al, 2015;Barth et al, 2017;Banchefsky and Park, 2018), campus culture (Crenshaw et al, 2017;Dresden et al, 2018), and lived experiences (Maltese and Tai, 2011;Alexander and Hermann, 2016;Smith and Gayles, 2018). Studies covering women faculty members include barriers to tenure (Soto, 2014;Williams and Ceci, 2015;Skewes et al, 2017), promotion (Gumpertz et al, 2017), worklife balance (O'Brien and Hebl, 2008;Adamo, 2013;Pedersen and Minnotte, 2017), and administrative advancement (Avallone et al, 2013;Lopez et al, 2018).…”