2011 STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Tiffany Barnes Audrey Rorrer Laura Hassey Hannah Rinehardt STARS Alliance Narrative Report
TABLE OF CONTENTS
STARS COMMON CORE INDICATORS .................................................................... 3
AUBURN ........................................................................................................................... 6
CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE ................................................ 11
FLORIDA A&M UNIVERSITY ................................................................................... 13
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY ................................................................................ 19
HAMPTON UNIVERSITY............................................................................................ 23
JOHNSON C SMITH UNIVERSITY ........................................................................... 27
MEREDITH COLLEGE ............................................................................................... 32
NORTH CAROLINA A&T UNIVSERITY ................................................................. 34
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY ............................................................. 36
SPELMAN COLLEGE .................................................................................................. 43
UNC CHARLOTTE ....................................................................................................... 45
UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS ............................................................................ 49
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA ........................................................................ 51
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE .................................................................................. 56
VIRGINIA TECH ........................................................................................................... 59
WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY .................................................................................. 63
WINTHROP UNIVERSITY .......................................................................................... 66
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
The STARS Alliance NSF Common Core Indicators as of January 2011*
Individual Participation and Impact
The primary activity was the STARS Leadership Corps (SLC), a multi-year experience providing
students with multiple touch-points to find information and support throughout their academic
journey. College students joined an SLC for an average of two semesters and performed projects (e.g.
K-14 outreach, mentoring, tutoring, pair-learning, research, internships, community service) for 5
hours a week. Professional development and community building opportunities were provided to
students, and faculty through partnerships and the STARS Celebration. We will impact 1200+
additional college students as we grow to 50 institutions by 2013, an additional 21,000 K12 students
directly by 2013, and thousands more via the online social network and digital library (to be
established in 2011-2012). Measures included: SLC pre/post surveys, SLC program evaluations,
faculty surveys, individual interviews and focus groups, K-12 outreach participant pre/post surveys,
Celebration attendee surveys, social media and digital library usage (in 2011-2012).
Table 1: STARS Alliance Outcomes Evidence for Individual Impact Aug 2006–May 2010
SLC: Increased bridging & retention leading indicators:
STARS Leadership Corps (SLC) Computing efficacy (mean = 4.76 to 5.18, 6 pt. scale) 762 SLC students at 23 schools Computing commitment (mean = 3.4 to 3.87, 5 pt. scale) 43% Black, 6% Hispanic; 50% women Computing social relevance (mean = 4.66‐4.98, 6 pt. sc) 70% applied, 40% accepted to REUs GPA (mean = 3.32 to 3.54) 28,000 K‐12 Outreach attendees 77% show increased interest in graduate programs 7 new SLC courses, 5 student orgs. UNCC controlled study Æ improved outcomes for SLC Pair Programming @ 12 schools, 43 classes with over 2,450 students Mentoring: workshop increased computing identity (mean = Mentoring @ 11 schools, 3.35 to 4.75, 6 pt. scale) 178 SLC mentors & 475 mentees Faculty, 67 faculty participants Changing cultures: STARS builds community and earns 5 tenured, 3 promoted to leadership recognition for computing depts. & colleges (faculty STARS Celebrations – four held interviews) 775 attendees Enrollment and Graduation Trends: Dramatically increased STARS member graduate enrollments 2006‐09 (32%); vs 2% nationally 11% increase in women’s undergraduate degree completion *The information included in this report is contained in the BPC-AE STARS Alliance 2006-2010 Third Year Annual Report, presented to
the National Science Foundation in January 2011.
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Organizational Capacity Development
To participate in the STARS Alliance, each STARS institution implemented the STARS Leadership
Corps every semester, and also implemented a mentoring and pair programming demonstration
project at least once. C-STARS was a separately-funded project affiliated with STARS. Faculty
participation in the STARS Alliance included managing the SLC and/or additional demonstration
projects (mentoring, pair programming). Participation enhanced the capacity of colleges and
universities to: 1) interweave engagement throughout the undergraduate and graduate student
experience; 2) promote student-led regional engagement (e.g., with K-12, industry, and the
community); 3) recruit and advance diverse student groups in computing by engaging in a community
of practice (e.g. SLC, demonstration projects, STARS Celebration, online social network, Affinity
Groups, digital library). We will impact 50 institutional members directly, with 100+ faculty over the
course of the next five years. Measures included, but will not be limited to in the future: Faculty
surveys, individual interviews and focus groups, Celebration attendee surveys, social media and
digital library usage, institutional enrollments and graduation rates trends compared to national trends
(Taulbee Report), institutional engagement trends compared to national trends (National Society of
Experiential Education surveys).
Table 3. STARS Members and Participation (2006-2009 Fall)
(M=Mentoring, PP=Pair Programming, C=SLC Course, O=SLC Student Organization)
STARS Initial Members Auburn Florida A&M Florida State Georgia Tech Landmark Meredith NC State Spelman UNC Charlotte USF Polytechnic J.C. Smith CPCC Georgia Southern Hampton NC A&T Shaw St. Augustine U. New Orleans USC‐Columbia UT‐Knoxville Virginia Tech # SLC participants
2006 2007 2008
Doctoral 25 14 18
HBCU‐Doc 12 11 29
Doctoral 15 15 15
Doctoral 10 14 22
2yr LD 7 10 6
Women‐UG 4 5 7
Doctoral 13 16 12
WHBCU‐UG 2 4 4
Doctoral 22 16 19
UG 4 13 8
HBCU‐UG 10 10
Comm. College Doctoral 6
HBCU‐UG 14
HBCU‐UG 12
HBCU‐UG *
HBCU‐UG 8
Doctoral 9
Doctoral 11
Doctoral 8
Doctoral 21
Type Initial
6613
2009
29
24
14
26
4
20
3
33
9
10
5
8
17
11
9
*
8
6
15
11
4544
4454
4655
PP
PP,M,O
O
PP,M,C
M
C
PP,C
PP,M,O
PP,M
M
PP,O
PP
PP,M,O
PP,M,C
3052
3599
3044
K‐6 Computer Clubs, 7 pubs SLC integrates w/ scholarship program for K‐12 outreach X‐Day series engages campus computing SLC mentors freshmen
Learning Disabilities, no computing major Tutors intro CS classes, UG research Graduates mentor UG research, 21 pubs Geek Week engages campus in computing Integrates SLC with REU Site & GAANN, 19 pubs
Leads mentoring program SLC fulfills volunteer hours required for CS degree
Creating 2+2 with UNC Charlotte Student‐led workshop, Competitive software development
Conducts peer tutoring & mentoring Builds community through socials & outreach
Participates in NC State SLC Partners with NC State for robotics outreach
Conducts peer tutoring & outreach Conducts robotics outreach Conducts mentoring & outreach Pools resources, Connects research & outreach
STARS Alliance institutions have made several
notable departures from the national trends in
computer science enrollment.
4011
3232
PP,M,C
PP,M,C
C
M
4814
5224
4538
SLC Highlights Figure 1: Total CS UG & Graduate enrollments at initial compared to new STARS schools from 2002­2003 (denoted 2003) to 2008­2009 (denoted 2009); new STARS started in 2008­2009 (missing data from six schools). New
5980
5143
Projects Page 4 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
1700
34200
1600
32200
1500
30200
1400
28200
1300
2940
36000
2860
35000
2780
34000
2700
33000
2620
32000
2540
31000
2460
30000
2380
29000
26200
1200
24200
1100
22200
2005-2006
2006-2007
Alliance
2007-2008
2008-2009
Taulbee
Figure 3: Comparison of Alliance & Taulbee CS
undergraduate enrollments
2300
28000
2005-2006
2006-2007
Alliance
2007-2008
2008-2009
Taulbee
Figure 4: Comparison of Alliance and Taulbee
CS graduate enrollments
Alliance Impact
National participation in the STARS Alliance took place through multiple pathways of participation
in our community of practice, i.e. demonstration projects (SLC, mentoring, pair programming),
STARS Celebration, and will continue to expand through the online social network, digital library,
Affinity Groups beginning in 2011-2012. Alliance members were provided seed funding to start
SLCs and institutional capacity building efforts at their institutions, and share effective practices
through public outlets (Celebration, social network, digital library, Affinity Groups, publication and
other dissemination). These public outlets enabled adaption and adoption of STARS best practices
across K14 education. Measures included, but will not be limited to: Faculty surveys and interviews,
Celebration attendee surveys, and in future, social media and digital library resources and usage,
follow up surveys of social media and digital library users (qualitative and quantitative).
• 2006‐2010 Dissemination: 13 journal articles, 44 conference papers, 12 posters, 2 TV & 2 news stories • Faculty Surveys consistently show that faculty are expanding their professional networks and
forming meaningful collaborations with others for BPC efforts.
• Fall 2010 Faculty Survey:
o 89% felt their involvement with STARS helped them connect with other faculty members o 88% believe that through STARS, they learned about promotion and research opportunities o 100% found ways to partner with their communities for BPC efforts o 100% felt they had developed helpful professional collaborations through STARS
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Auburn University
http://www.eng.auburn.edu/stars
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Cheryl D. Seals
Academic Liaison: Cheryl D. Seals
Eval Graduate Assistant: Justus Nyagwencha
Partners:
Community: AU Department of Computer
Science & Software Engineering, Auburn
University Outreach, AU Office of Multicultural
Affairs, ACM, Target University Relations
K-12: Auburn City Schools, Lee County Schools
Demonstration Projects
Culturally Situated Design Tools (C-STARS)
STARS Alliance Committees
STARS Leadership Corps, Mentoring, New
Members, Alliance Leadership
SUMMARY
The 2011 Auburn University chapter of the Student
Leadership Corps (SLC) consisted of 17 Auburn students
(8 graduate and 9 undergraduate) plus 2 STARS
Affiliates. This group worked with the K-12 community to
increase computer literacy and completed 2 programs for
the local department to raise awareness of computing
careers. Eight graduate students are existing SLC graduate
students and five will continue next year with two
completing their Master’s Degree and one completing
their PhD degree. Four of these continuing graduate
students are my research assistants or are funded by
STARS and other grants and work with the STARS as a
Auburn at STARS Conference
service requirement in my research assistants work
contracts or volunteer if they are on fellowship. During the 2010-2011 year, STARS had Nine SLC
undergraduate members and 2 SLC undergraduate STARS Affiliates as summer REU that will
continue research during fall semester.
Successes
• STARS Computer Clubs partners with Auburn City School Board for K-12 Outreach
• Conducted Alice computer camps for six weeks in 6 elementary schools in the Auburn City
Schools system for over 150 students
• Conducted Lego Adventure experience for nine weeks in 2 elementary school in ACS
• Conducted Alice Programming contest in ACS
• Supported and provided 4 exhibits for Engineering Day to encourage computing as a major
K-12 Students (gaming, handheld and wireless exhibits)
Lessons learned
• Better organization of student time and commitment to SLC tasks improves STARS output
• Need to get more folks to take ownership of projects to complete them more efficiently.
• Establishment of the SLC Affiliate/Ambassador category, to facilitate the participation of nonCIS students as auxiliary members of the SLC (member of groups that collaborate with us).
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
•
•
Better utilization of organization web pages
to publicize events and more accountability
to keeping track of Journals to record
progress on activities (photos, reflections,
etc.). More tracking, curriculum and data
collection are key to future success. During
this year, we utilized the web much more
efficiently to advertise programs and to keep
track of events with online tracking of events
by Evaluation Assistant
Need to do more community and more
recruiting/retention efforts for pre-majors that
AFTER SCHOOL ACADEMY at RICHLAND
are already current AU students. During
2010-2011 year, this was the first year that
we had more than 8 undergraduates and this was accomplished by means of many
solicitations to freshman and sophomore students. In the past we have only had 1-2
undergraduate students.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
We have contacted the local media and STARS activities have appeared on TV, AU Daily campus
email news, and College of engineering journal.
Community Building & Computing Identity
STARS has worked with local school system to structure students after school activities and with an
in school computing experience. With our summer KEMET project (grades 9-12) we have also
involved parents and community in opening and closing ceremony, with two parents involved in
everyday of the camp experience (Activity for 30 high school students).
Mentoring:
During mentoring this year was the first year that we attempted to bring freshman and upper classman
together with formal and informal mentors. This worked in an informal way in that many of the
students were able to talk to their mentors at seminars, outreach activities, but in the upcoming
semester we plan to have training session and more scheduled activities for mentors and mentees.
Mentor-mentee communication type, frequency
Email: Yes
Face to Face: Yes
Events
Seminars attended together: 6
Outreach attended together: 5-9 weeks
Mentor training sessions:
Retreats with mentors and mentees:
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
16 Auburn students (receiving stipends), plus two graduate Affiliate volunteer not receiving stipend)
and plus 2 undergraduate STARS Affiliates (none receiving stipends). The students that were not
funded through STARS are either my research students or students that want to be involved in
STARS activities. We have weekly or bi-weekly meetings to organize work and training for outreach
and research activities. Dr. Seals manages and facilitates these meetings. SLC students perform K-12
STARS computer club, summer camps, applied gaming and HCI research.
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
Grad
Females
2
1
0
0
0
UG
Females
2
0
3
0
0
Grad
Males
2
3
0
0
0
UG Males
2
0
2
0
0
Total
3
5
5
4
17
SLC Details
SLC Project Types
# SLC stipends & amounts
16
UG - $500
Grad- $500-$1000
# SLC with no stipends
3 UGrads
1 Grad
SLC Meeting Frequency
Weekly
SLC Meeting Attendance
85% - 70%
# Marketing Kits Distribtued
2
# Returning & New SLC
8 returning
8 new
2010-2011 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
1
# SLC Attendes
8
# SLC Posters
3
# SLC Talks
2
# Faculty Talks
1
# SLC
K-12 Outreach
10
Community Service
1
C-STARS
0
Mentoring
2
Research
4
Internship
2
Marketing
1
TOTAL
19
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
K-12 Computer Club Afterschool program with Alice and Lego AdVenture in conjunction with
Auburn City Schools Venture program. Tiger Club, Junior Tiger Club, KEMET Club and Journalism
Camp.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach
Activity &
Description
(including
CSDT used)
Primary audience attendee information
Primary audience Grade level or role
(e.g. 7th grade,
middle, high,
parent, teacher,
Ethnicity and
counselor)
gender
#
STARS
Mentoring
Program
1
Middle & High
School
Lego
Robotics
9
Middle School (5
th
& 6 grade)
Alice
Computer
Clubs
6
6 Schools Clubs
including teacher
Journalism
Camp
1
Tiger Camp
Junior Tiger
Camp
KEMET
Academy
Totals
1
1
1
20
Duration of one
visit
Total contact hours
1 day
4 hours
4 hrs * 1 day(visit) * 1000
attendees = 4000 hours
24 attendees
25 students
and 1teacher
per school. All
genders and
ethnicities.
25 students
and 1 teacher.
All genders and
ethnicities
6-9 weeks
1-1.5 hours
1.5 hours * 9 visits (weeks) *
24 attendees = 324 hours
6 weeks
1 -2 hours
6 weeks * 2 hrs *26
attendees = 312 hrs
1 week
1.5 hours
35
1 week
1.5 hours
35 students
1 week
4 hours
28 students
1 week
Year
round
8 hours
1 week * 1.5 hrs *26
attendees = 39 hrs
1 week * 1.5 hrs * 35
attendees = 52.5 hrs
1 week * 4 hrs * 35 attendees
= 140 hrs
1 week * 8 hrs * 28 attendees
= 224 hrs
44.5 hours
5091.5 Hours
1000 attendees
of All ethnicities
and genders
th
High School
Outreach
High School
Outreach
Junior High School
High School
Outreach
K-12
# and
frequency
1174 students
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Events for STARS Leadership Corps Students
#
SLC
12
4
2
10
Event Title
STARS Mentoring Program
STARS Mentoring Training
STARS Marketing Training
Engineering Day as leadership Activity
Location
Shelby Center
Florida
Florida
Auburn Student Center
STARS Women in Computing Celebration
STARS Admin Training
STARS Computer Experience Days
Shelby Center
CSSE Conference Room
Florida
Shelby Seminar Room
30
2
20
STARS end of semester Mentoring Meeting
Shelby Conference Room
12
Description
Introduction to STARS
Mentoring Workshop with SLC
Marketing Training at SLC
Gaming, IPhone and other research displays
Introduction to Women Grads and professionals
Also careers in computing and informal mentor
Session. Celebrate women graduates.
Training to utilize WebEx for Admin tasks
Meeting to learn about computing careers
End of semester meeting to discuss semester
and plans for future computing careers
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
Auburn University is planning to add a computing experience class during the fall. This course will
have a service requirement and will be a one hour class during the fall semester and a 2 hour class
during the spring semester. It will be an extra course taught by Dr. Seals, above her regular teaching
load.
SLC Recruiting
Please describe your campus recruiting and dissemination methods for the SLC here.
SLC recruiting is done by soliciting students through email, Facebook invites, through word of mouth
and personal invitations.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Grants
1. NSF STEM – Scholarship for STEM was awarded in November 2010
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Refereed Journal Proceedings
1.
*Swanier, C., Seals, C.D., *Billionaire, E. (2009). Visual Programming: A Programming
Tool for Increasing Mathematics Achievement. July - Sept'09, Journal of Educational Technology,
Vol.6 No. 2. pp. 1-5.
2.
Seals, C.D.,* Rouse, K., *McMillian, *Y. Williams, A., Gilbert, J. and Chapman, R. (2008).
Computer Gaming at Every Age: A Comparative Evaluation of Alice. i-manager's Journal of
Educational Technology the Vol.5 No. 3.
3.
Seals,C.,*Agarwal,R., Agarwal,S., Evans, C., (submitted September). Experiences of
computing camps to aid at risk youth with CAMP ROC: Reaching Our Children, Journal of
Transformative Education.
4.
*Williams, A., *Rouse, K., Seals, C.D.(15%), & Gilbert, J.E. (2008). Enhancing Reading
Literacy in Elementary Children using Programming for Scientific Simulations, International Journal
on E-Learning (accepted to appear.
Refereed Conference Proceedings
1.
Dahlberg, T., T. Barnes, A. Rorrer, C. Seals, M. Lustria, L. Hawkes. “The STARS
Leadership Corps: Case studies in broadening participation in computing.” In IEEE Frontiers in
Education 2008, Saratoga Springs, NY, October 22-25, 2008.
2.
Seals, C., Agarwal, R., *Rouse, K., *Lindsey, R., *Chilamantula, V., and Chapman, R.
(2008). Computer Clubs Programs to Increase Computer Literacy, ADMI conference, on CD-ROM,
April 2008.
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
3.
*Williams, A., Seals, C., *Rouse, K., & Gilbert, J. (2006). Visual Programming with Squeak
SimBuilder: Techniques for E-Learning in the Creation of Science Frameworks. In Proceedings of
E-Learn 2006 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher
Education, CD-ROM.
News Articles
1. STARS computer Clubs in Auburn Opelika News Fall 2009
2. Lego AdVenture program with STARS Computer Club in Auburn Opelika News Spring 2008
3. About the STARS Conference on CBS News Affiliate Broadcast in Columbus Georgia, July 2007
Radio Programs
1. STARS Computer Clubs on Auburn Local Radio Fall 2009
TV Program
1. STARS Computer Club on Local Cable Auburn City Schools Network for after school program
Presentations about STARS
1.
Seals, C.D. (2011). Engineering Day Gaming Exhibitions by AU STARS students. Auburn
EDay 2011
2.
Seals, C.D. (2010). Engineering Day Gaming Exhibitions by AU STARS students. Auburn
EDay 2010.
3.
Seals, C.D., & Gilbert, J.E. (2009). Engineering Day Gaming Exhibitions by AU STARS
students. Auburn EDay 2009.
4.
Seals, C.D., & Gilbert, J.E. (2008). Engineering Day Gaming Exhibitions by AU STARS
students. Auburn EDay 2008.
5.
Seals, C.D., Chapman, R., & Gilbert, J.E. (2007). Alice EDay Exhibition. Local Alice
computer camp students exhibited their works at Auburn EDay 2007
6.
Seals, C.D., Chapman, R., Carlisle, W.H., & Gilbert, J.E. (May, 2008). Alice EDay
Exhibition. Local Alice computer camp winners exhibited their works at Auburn EDay 2008.
7.
Seals, C. D. & Lindsey, R. (March, 2008). ACMSE Digital Animation Festival. Top 8
students from our area computer camps presented their Digital animations in Alice 3D at ACMSE
Poster Session.
8.
Seals, C. D. & Lindsey, R. (Feb, 2008). Alice Film Festival Competition. We brought the top
10 students from our area computer camps to UAB for the Alice film festival and won 4 of the top 7
places in our category.
Seals, C.D., Chapman, R., & Gilbert, J.E. (2007). Alice EDay Exhibition. Local Alice computer camp
students exhibited their works at Auburn EDay 2007
Materials (Presentations, posters, handouts) developed for outreach K-12, teachers, counselors
1.
Seals, C. D. Lesson Plans for Elementary, Middle School computer Clubs and Saturday
Academies http://www.eng.auburn.edu/stars/
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Central Piedmont Community College
http://www.cpcc.edu/stars
Staff and Roles:
Academic Liaison: Felesia Stukes
Partners:
Industry: Cisco
Community:
North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA)
Central Piedmont Community College
(Internal Partners that are outward facing to
greater community)
K-12: CMS math and science department
SUMMARY
Successes
We are best at meeting the needs of a diverse population of students pursuing both 2-year and 4-year
degrees.
Lessons learned
I have learned the audience for STARS at 2-year institutions is students who self indentify as
pursuing a STEM degree. Post transfer they may still choose a Computing major after their
participation in STARS events. I have also learned that co-curricular activities best support the
STARS goals.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
I am working with the CPCC Information Technology Division to develop ways to leverage STARS
while pursuing additional grant funding.
Community Building & Computing Identity
In the Spring 2011 term, we focused on building our STARS in STEM student organization through
events. I also administered the CPCC STEM Survey to evaluate the student perceptions and
experiences in the CPCC Science, Information Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) Divisions.
We are also piloting the use of an online community as a way to build community among nontraditional students in preparation for the STARS Community to come.
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
The SLC is managed in two parts. There are students who enroll in the Fall Leadership Course, and
the students who participate in the Student Organization. Only those students who were in active
leadership are reported in the SLC tables below. There were however, a total of 40 students who are a
part of the STARS student organization.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Caucasian
Total
Grad
Females
UG
Females
Grad
Males
UG Males
1
2
Total
1
2
3
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
SLC Project Types
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
2
# SLC with no stipends
1
SLC Meeting Frequency
monthly
SLC Meeting Attendance
# Marketing Kits Distributed
3
# Returning & New SLC
1 returning/ 2 new
2010 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
1
# SLC Attendees
1
# SLC Posters
1
# SLC Talks
0
# Faculty Talks
1
# SLC
K-12 Outreach
Community Service
C-STARS
Mentoring
Research
Internship
Marketing
3
TOTAL
3
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
Events for STARS Leadership Corps Students
Event Title
Location
CPCC Day @ Cisco
Charlotte Cisco
Office
College Transfer Info
Session
STEM Student Roundtable
CPCC Main
Campus
CPCC Main
Campus
STEM Climate Survey
Virtual
#
SLC
#
Students
Description
1
15
3
22
2
5
Technology Showcase, About Cisco Careers, &
Adopt-An-Academy Mentoring Program
Partnered with UNC Charlotte Transfer Outreach
Team to provide info on how to best plan for
Transfer to 4-year Institutions
Discuss obstacles/solutions for STEM
students
3
45
Modeled after STARS Survey
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
As the 2011 College Fellow, I am working on my proposed project using the STEM Climate Survey.
I developed The STEM Climate Survey based on the STARS Survey. I plan to use the results to
demonstrate the need for institutional support of STARS-type activities. Student participation in the
CPCC STEM Climate Survey will also contribute to campus understanding of perceptions of Science,
Information Technology, Engineering & Math Divisions, and in enhancing the campus climate for
students taking these courses. Several grant proposals are underway to support our institutionalization
efforts.
SLC Recruiting
We recruit and disseminate at campus events, and through an email distribution of all interested
students. We also receive referrals from counselors, academic advisors and other instructors.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Student Proposals
• NCWIT Academic Alliance (AA) Seed Proposal (not accepted)
Conferences & Workshop Presentations about STARS
• Learning College Showcase (accepted as a presenter)
Central Piedmont Community College
May 19, 2011
•
2011 STEMtech Conference (accepted as a presenter)
October 2 - 5, 2011
http://www.league.org/2011stemtech/
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Florida A&M University http://www.cis.famu.edu/~famustars
Staff and Roles:
PI: Dr. Edward L. Jones, CIS Chair
Co-PI: Dr. Jason T. Black, Assoc. Chair/Academic
Liaison
Student Evaluations Coordinator: Olivia Wilson,
Solange Artie
Demonstration Projects
STARS Leadership Corps, Pair Programming,
Culturally Situated Design Tools (C-STARS),
Mentoring
Partners:
Florida A&M University:
• FGLSAMP Scholarship Program, FAMU Chapter
• FAMU CIS ACM Club
• FAMU CIS Mentoring Organization (CISMO)
• National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE),
FAMU
Community: Boys and Girls Clubs of the Big Bend
K-12:
• Leon County Schools
• Godby High School IT Academy
• Century21 Project, Fairview Middle School
Business: TalTECH Alliance, Tallahassee, FL
STARS Alliance Committees
Affinity Group (Co-Chair)
SUMMARY
The current structure of the FAMU chapter of the SLC
consists of 5 graduate and 3 funded undergraduate students
from the Computer and Information Sciences department at
FAMU, as well as 25 additional associate scholars, who are
members of our African-American Women in Computer
Science (AAWCS) scholarship program. The focus of this
SLC is to recruit students to both FAMU and CIS, and to
provide services for current students in the efforts of
increasing retention. Our goal is to provide outreach on our
campuses, at local schools, and in our communities through
workshops, seminars, on-campus visits and tours, and other
activities. Each SLC member is assigned to work on a specific component of this effort, and is
encouraged to write reflections and provide feedback on their progress.
The FAMU STARS participate in the STARS Leadership Corps, C-STARS, and Pair Programming.
Successes
The FAMU chapter has been very effective in recruitment and outreach. We have worked hard to
make connections with local middle and high schools and are establishing partnerships that will
allow us continued contact with students who may express interest in CS and IT. Through our NSFfunded ITEST grant entitled TRI-IT, which is an alliance between 3 schools – FAMU, Florida State
College at Jacksonville and Seminole Community College in Orlando - each school works with high
school girls to increase their motivation and enthusiasm about pursuing careers in computer science.
TRI-IT is implemented via after-school workshops held at 2 local schools (our experimental
groups), and monthly workshops held at an additional 2 schools (our control groups), with the
conclusion being a 1-week summer programs each summer. Each workshop and the summer
programs are facilitated by our SLC students. The TRI-IT program began in the Summer of 2009,
and we have just completed our 3rd year of after-school and Saturday monthly sessions. TRI-IT is
Page 13 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
specifically for 9th - 11th grade girls this year, and we are currently working with between 10-15 girls
at each site (2 schools) each meeting.
The FAMU STAR is also implementing CSDT at local middle schools. We have conducted
a 1-week workshop over the summer during the past 2 summers, and are planning to conduct a more
concentrated intervention with local students during the summer months of 2011. We also have
several students pursuing research involving developing tools for the CSDT site, as a means of
completing Masters-level and undergraduate research. Some of the results of this work have been
presented at regional and national IT conferences during the summer and Fall semesters.
Lessons learned
As we stated in the Fall 2010 report, we have
firmly established a strong communication system
between our office and our student, which involves
email, phone calls, Facebook and texting. This has
aided us greatly in soliciting and receiving
information from our students in a timely and
efficient manner. We will also continue to utilize
the administrative assistance of both the AAWCS
and TRI-IT program assistants as a means of
managing correspondence, data collection and
processing of documents. We are also insisting
that student reflections be done and submitted more
regularly, and are using an electronic group on Yahoo! as a storage location for these items.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
Due to restructuring and budget issues at FAMU, the process of creating an SLC-related course is
likely not going to come to fruition. As a result, we are looking into other means of permanently
establishing the SLC as a part of the campus programs. This requires registering as a campus
organization through Student Activities, which we have done. Once approved, this will allow the
SLC to function as a campus club, and also receive a small annual operating budget. We plan to
complete this process over the summer and early in the Fall 2011 semester.
Community Building & Computing Identity
On campus, FAMU SLC students have continued to remain very visible, providing tours of our
department and the campus, and speaking with various students and other departments about the field
of computing and opportunities for students in CIS. Nationally, STARS faculty are collaborating
with other institutions focusing on BPC and serving on panels and communities related to improving
the image of diversity. Also, as part of the STARS Scaling Project, FAMU will be mentoring two
additional schools – Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) and Northwest Florida State College
(NWFSC) – in their efforts of establishing their SLC. As part of this, we will be hosting annually a
mini-STARS Celebration here at FAMU during the Spring semester, where the 3 schools will come
together to discuss best practices and lessons learned, as well as share research experiences. We will
begin planning for these activities at the beginning of the Fall semester.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Alliance support
The FAMU SLC is currently involved in establishing C-STARS activities and conducting pair
programming in several lab courses. SLC students have received stipend checks from C-STARS; the
pair programming work is done through our courses at FAMU, taught by the Academic Liaison, who
is the only one that has received funding for this initiative.
Page 14 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
C-STARS: Culturally Situated Design Tools
Summary
The Spring 2011 semester was spent with FAMU re-establishing contact with Fairview Middle
School, the school we have worked with previously, as well as recruiting new schools to participate.
Additionally, we have been working with SLC members who have expressed a desire to participate in
planning and experimentation with the tool, so that they will be ready when the workshops begin.
Our current progress on these activities includes:
o Students from FAMU visited 3 middle schools for after-school sessions during one
week in Spring 2011, to conduct a 1 hour workshop designed to introduce them to the
CSDT concept in efforts of getting them on board.
o SLC Students also planned a 1 week summer session, which unfortunately we were
forced to cancel due to lack of participation. As a result, more students have been
recruited to conduct CSDT activities (both service learning and research oriented)
during the summer months, from which data will be collected and analyzed. The
hope is to develop publications on the research in the coming semesters. We have
recruited 9 students for this effort, and hope to continue this work throughout the
academic year.
Additionally, three of our students are currently involved in research activities related to C-STARS,
focusing on creating games that serve as either the front-end of tools on the CSDT site, or that utilize
some of the same concepts, software platforms and learning styles of CSDT. The breakdown of this
research is described below:
• LeAndrew Davis: successfully defended his Thesis Prospectus on a topic centered around
enhancing the Virtual Breakdancer tool. He hopes to have the Thesis defended by the
conclusion of the Fall semester.
• Nathalie Cook and Cameron Askew: both are beginning to work on the research side of
CSDT; both are interested in creating enhancements to the CSDT application suite. Ron
Eglash provided some very helpful insight on the direction that can best serve the effort, and
we are investigating those efforts now. It is the hope that these students can continue this
work throughout the academic year.
Successes
We will be continuing our working with the schools we have worked with in the past to increase
number of participants, as well as formally implement the program, in the Fall 2011 semester. We
are hoping to expand this to community centers and after-school programs as well.
Lessons learned
One thing that we discovered is that it is difficult to get SLC students motivated to take on this extra
assignment when 1) they are already busy with school and classes; 2) they are not receiving extra
funding yet for participating in this component; and 3) they must spend time learning to use the tool
for instruction. Thus, our preparation has been slowed by these complications as well. Thanks to
stipends from the C-STARS effort, this problem is being reduced.
Mentoring
FAMU is working to set up the mentoring program, but there are political issues within our
department that are making this process difficult (our department has an established mentoring
organization, and advisors to that organization see our mentoring efforts as minimizing theirs). To
initiate this, two of our students have taken the lead as mentoring coordinators, and will be putting in
place a formalized mentoring program that will collaborate with our departmental mentoring
organization (CIS Mentoring Organization, or CISMO) during the upcoming semester. At the
present, they have been studying the mentoring materials provided by Nathan Thomas, and are
developing a plan for mentoring training, to take place in 2011 - 2012.
Page 15 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Pair Programming
Number of instructors implementing: 3
Number of classes implementing pair programming: 5 (3 sections of C++ lab, 1 section of Data
Structure, 1 section of Intro to OO Programming )
Number of students participating in pair programming: Class 1 (lab): 10, Class 2 (lab): 12, Class 3
(lab): 11, Class 4 (OOP): 8, Class 5 (Data Struct): 25
Name of courses: 1) COP 3014 Fundamentals of Programming (in C++) Laboratory (3 section)
2) COP 3330 Introduction to Object Oriented Programming (1 section)
3) COP 3530 Program, File and Data Structures (1 section)
STARS Leadership Corps
The FAMU chapter of the SLC consists of 5 graduate and 3 undergraduate students from the
Computer and Information Sciences department at FAMU. The focus of this SLC is to recruit
students to both FAMU and CIS, and to provide services for current students in the efforts of
increasing retention. Our goal is to provide outreach on our campuses, at local schools, and in our
communities through workshops, seminars, on-campus visits and tours, and other activities. Each
SLC member is assigned to work on a specific component of this effort, and is encouraged to write
reflections and provide feedback on their progress.
The entire corps participated in two campus tours, one by Pensacola Junior College students,
and one by a group of local high school students, who both came to visit the CIS department. During
these tours, our students also discussed the opportunities for CIS students at FAMU and beyond, and
gave a wonderful picture of why they chose CIS as career. Additionally, the SLC conducted 3 dorm
storms, where SLC members visited the FAMU dorms and went door-to-door, talking about CS and
IT and CIS to interested students. All of these activities were a success.
Additionally, the SLC was involved in the continued management and operation of FAMU’s
first Video Game club. This club, organized by 2 CIS students (one of which is in the SLC) is
designed to introduce students on campus to the fun and exciting world of gaming, through weekly
social get-togethers, competitions, and panel discussions. The idea is to utilize this club as a way of
showing them that there is a career in this technology, and to excite these students about considering
CIS as a major. At present, there are 24 members in the organization, and there have been 5 citywide competitions hosted by the club and Florida State’s gaming club, with local technology
sponsors.
As mentioned earlier, The SLC is also facilitating another NSF-funded program, the TRIRegional Information Technology (TRI-IT) Project, an alliance between FAMU, Florida State
College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) and Seminole State College (SSC), which seeks to interest girls (9th –
11th grade) in the fields of CS and IT. We are currently working with 36 girls in this program,
through bi-weekly after-school workshops with 1 Saturday workshop as well. In addition, participants
attend an annual 1-week summer program, held at FAMU and coordinated by SLC students. The
Summer 2011 program is slated to introduce the girls to Podcasting and Multimedia Technology.
The girls will also visit the University’s television station, as well as the FSU Multimedia and
Broadcasting office (which does all multimedia for sporting events, like commercials, jumbotron,
etc.) The TRI-IT program will be funded through September of 2011.
Recruiting
We have held the following recruitment and dissemination efforts for the FAMU SLC during this
semester:
1.
On-campus tours (2): hosting students from K-12 and Community College; providing
tours, demos of research in CIS, discussions and roundtables about careers in CS and IT;
networking and exchanging names and information for further contact.
2.
Visits to local K-12 schools (5): speaking to technology classes at local middle and high
schools about CS and IT, opportunities at FAMU, and the STARS program
Page 16 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
3.
4.
Dorm Storms (3): SLC members visiting campus dormitories and going door-to-door,
talking to students about CS and IT careers (particularly freshmen who may not have
declared a major yet); also, having seminars in dorm lobby and reception area about CS
and IT.
participating in the STARS Alliance-wide marketing campaign; dropping off marketing
kits at local schools and community centers
Grants
1. NSF ITEST: *STEM Robotics Academy (STEM-RA). Award Amount: $850,000;
Awarded: Pending, October 2011; Duration: until December 2015. Type of program:
Workshop and summer program for high school students interested in learning about
robotics and how it relates to STEM careers. Description: Students will participate in
monthly workshop (after-school) with activities based on engineering and computer-related
tasks with a robotics focus; in summer, same students will attend 2-week summer program at
FAMU with a robotics focus, which will culminate in a Robotics competition. Winners from
the competition will be sent as a teams to the regional robotics competitions as delegates.
FAMU SLC students will serve as instructors for summer program and monthly workshops.
Number of Participants: 60. FUNDING IS PENDING (review occurring Summer 2011).
2. Department of Defense: HBCU/MSI Centers of Excellence: Banneker STEM Center of
Education (B-SEC). Award Amount: $4 million dollars over 4 years ($1 million annually).
Duration: March, 2011 until December: 2014. Type of program: Development of a Center
of Operation for all STEM-Related programs at both FAMU and Tallahassee Community
College (TCC). Office will service all STEM programs through assistance with data
collection and reporting, providing summer program activities for STEM students, providing
access to graduate school and professional preparation opportunities, academic advisement,
and curriculum enhancement for all STEM disciplines at both institutions. APPLICATION
WAS REJECTED (very competitive – only 2 chosen out of 93 submissions).
3. NSF S-STEM: **African-American Women in Computer Science (AAWCS)
Scholarship Program. Award Amount: $565,000; Awarded: July 2008; Duration: until
June 2012. Type of program: Scholarship for underrepresented women Description:
Students are awarded $2,000 - $5,000 per semester based on Financial Need; students must
maintain a 2.8 GPA and remain active in the program, which includes becoming members of
ACM, STARS and FGLSAMP. Number of Participants: 20 per semester.
4. NSF ITEST: *TRI-IT: Tri-institutional Initiative for Motivating Girls in IT. Award
Amount: $259,000; Awarded: September 2008; Duration: until September 2011. Type
of program: Workshop and summer program for high school girls. Description:
Students will participate in monthly workshop (after-school) with activities based on
engineering and computer-related tasks; in summer, same students will attend 1-week
summer program at FAMU, with topics such as mobile computing, GPS technology, and
multimedia programming. Program is Alliance between FAMU, Florida Community College
at Jacksonville (FCCJ) and Seminole Community College (SCC); students will also travel for
1-day mini-conference at end of summer program. FAMU SLC students will serve as
instructors for summer program and monthly workshops. Number of Participants: 36.
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Presentations about STARS
1. *Black, Jason. STARS Alliance and Careers in CS and IT (5 presentations). Presented to
various high school and community college groups, Spring 2011, Tallahassee, Florida
Page 17 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Events and Outreach Impact
Florida A&M Univ., Tallahassee, FL
SLC
Attendee
s
3 SLC, 23
FAMU
students
Florida A&M University,
Tallahassee
8 SLC, 25
K-12
students,
2 parents
SLC student oriented events
FAMU Dorm Storm – Females
Hosting parents and students from
TRI-IT program
Hosting students from Pensacola
Junior College - Tour of FAMU and
CIS Department
Location
Florida A&M Univ., Tallahassee, FL
12 SLC,
52 PJC
Students
Description
Informational Session with female students
at several dorms on FAMU Campus.
Hosted 25 students and 2 parents that
visited FAMU and CIS; toured the campus,
then held seminar on CS careers and
roundtable discussion with SLC members
about FAMU and CS in general
Hosted 52 students who are graduating
seniors that visited FAMU and CIS; toured
the campus, then held seminar on CS
careers and roundtable discussion with SLC
members about FAMU and CS in general
Primary audience attendee information
Outreach Activity
High School Outreach – session at
Rickards High School where we
talked with students about FAMU
and careers in CS
29
4 SLC; 20 CIS Majors at
FAMU
35
Middle School students;
9 SLC; 2 teachers
Ethnicity and
gender
98% minority
(mostly African
American),
40% female
90% minority
(mostly African
American),
50% female
90% minority
(mostly African
American),
45% female
60% minority
(mostly African
American),
25% female
99% minority
(mostly African
American),
approx 50%
female
99% Africanamerican; 2
white; 55%
female
High school students; 3
high school teachers; 13
SLC members
99% AfricanAmerican; 1
white, 1
hispanic; 100%
female
Godby High School Open House
where we talked with students
about FAMU and careers in CS
250
Rickards High School Open House
where we talked with students
about FAMU and careers in CS
200
Primary audience
High School students
th
(mostly 11-12 graders)
in 2 classes, 1 high
school teacher
High School students
th
(mostly 11-12 graders),
several high school
teacher and parents
High School students
th
(mostly 11-12 graders),
several high school
teacher and parents
250
Middle School students
at technology magnet
school
STARS Technology Middle School
Career Day Participants
STARS SLC Business Etiquette
101 Seminar
CSDT at Fairview Middle School
TRI-IT – working with high school
girls at Rickards and Godby
Totals
#
24
36
824
UG/HS/MS Students
# and
frequency
Duration
of one
visit
Total
contact
hours
1 visit
4 hours
1 visit
2 hours
1 visit
2 hours
1 visit
5 hours
24 Attendees
* 1 visit * 4
hrs = 96 hrs
250
attendees * 1
visit * 2 hrs =
500 hrs
200
attendees * 1
visit * 2 hrs =
400 hrs
250
attendees * 1
visit * 5 hrs =
1250 hrs
1.5 hours
29 attendees
* 1 visit * 1.5
hrs = 43.5
hrs
1 event
1 week
during
semester
(10 visits)
Twice a
week at
each site
========
1 Saturday
each
month
16 visits
4 hours
4 hours
22.5
hours
35 attendees
* 1 visit * 4
hrs = 140 hrs
36 attendees
* 10 visit * 4
hrs = 1440
hrs
3869.5
hours
Page 18 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
http://starsalliance.fsu.edu
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Larry Dennis
Academic Liaison: Ebe Randeree
SLC & Mentoring Coordinator: None
C-STARS Faculty: None
Evaluator: Ebe Randeree
Evaluation Graduate Assistant: None
Pair Programming Faculty: None
Evaluation Assistant: Kirk Yoder
Partners:
Community: Local Not-For-Profits, Community
organizations, 45 local technology companies,
Tallahassee Senior Center, Technology Student
Association (Florida), Tallahassee Gifted Network,
Tallahassee SQL Users Group, TalTech Alliance,
Florida Technology Student Association (TSA),
Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI), State of
Florida
K-12: Nims Middle School, Godby High School,
Maclay High School, Leon High School, Montford,
Middle School, W.T. Moore Elementary School,
Hawks Rise Elementary School, Leon County
Schools
SUMMARY
The Florida State University STARS has focused on projects that are SUSTAINABLE,
TRANSFERABLE, and MEASURABLE:
1) SUSTAINABLE – maintain existing projects from current and previous semester and find
additional resources to support them; create a long term relationship with all our partners;
recruit and retaining students that can support existing projects. We have continued all
previous projects and added 5 more this semester. A primary goal is to develop
RELATIONSHIPS and then MAINTAIN THEM – this facilitates future projects, builds trust
with external agencies, and provides continuity for the k-12 students we interact with.
2) TRANSFERABLE – design frameworks, projects, and resource kits that can be used by
future students as well as other STARS chapters; document procedures, make all projects and
output available through our website. All projects are visible on our website and we
document all events in Google maps. We also share the Narratives with local agencies that
we work with.
3) MEASURABLE – identify ways to measure impact and reach and then track them for trends
and improvements; look for ways to improve outcomes based on data. We collect data and
surveys (mostly pre-post) for every project so that we can show improvements and measure
reach, efficiency, outcomes, resource allocations, etc. We use the SMART goals approach to
our activities.
Successes
[ON CAMPUS] We have been leaders in peer outreach on campus and have no problems attracting
SLC students. We have expanded our middle school outreach, expanded retention efforts to keep
students in computing/IT, and worked to create social structures to support retention efforts. STARS
has become the marketing arm of a new major created within the College (the Information,
Communication & Technology major was added this past Fall) that included projects with social
media and video creation. [K-12] We have also expanded our elementary school outreach. We are
currently working with the 24 elementary schools in Leon County on a STEM research grant. We
have been working with the Tallahassee Gifted Network to develop partnerships as well as training
the teachers that work with gifted students on robotics. In addition, we have worked with Leon
County Schools on a grant application to implement gifted technology clubs at 2 middle schools and
1 high school (pending). We spent the last year running two technology clubs at a middle school and
an elementary school. [INDUSTRY] We have also developed industry partners for recruitment,
Page 19 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
internships, and employment of computing/IT students. We have become the defacto recruitment
organization for bringing companies to campus to hire interns and new employees in the
IT/Computing Industry. We presented at the State Capitol for an event this Spring. We have created
a network of business IT leaders that support our mentoring, job creation, and project initiatives.
[CURRICULUM] We began teaching the first IT leadership class this summer of 2010 and repeated
the class in the Fall and Spring. The concepts from STARS have been assimilated into the IT and
ICT program. The class is an institutionalization of the STARS program in the College.
Lessons learned
Keeping up with the 47 projects we completed in fiscal year 10-11 was difficult, especially with a
small core team of students (12). Learning to say “NO” to opportunities has been a lesson we are
learning. While the class has been able to provide some support for our projects, the quality and
commitment of the students in the class is varied (STARS members are committed to making the
project succeed while class students are focused on their grade as the main motivator. This year, we
have become more efficient at project management and have undertaken a record number (23 this
Fall, 24 this Spring) of projects (both one-time events and sustained events).
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
We have had success with our Leadership class. The class is designed as 50% STARS projects, 25%
leadership theory, and 25% leadership activities designed to build skill sets, increase group dynamics,
and facilitate growth. The course went live Summer 2010 with 28 students registered (much more
than the 12-14 we can accommodate with stipends). The course is designed to be repeatable and
expect 20-30 students every semester. We had 23 in the Fall and 28 for the Spring 2011 semester.
With 22 students this summer, the class is running smoothly. In addition, the class has now been
approved by the University as one of the Leadership courses students could take to meet the
Leadership Certificate offered at FSU for students.
Community Building & Computing Identity
On campus – we have built a community through our X-Day series (Gameday, Career Day, Club Day). We
have also been very successful with our Feed Your Brain education series (educational seminars on emerging
topics on weekends) that is now a fixture in the college. In addition, we launched a Feed Your Brain – NON IT
seminar series. The original FYB was targeted at tech topics. The Non-IT series focuses on non-tech topics
(health jobs, resume writing, stress management, gaming, job negotiation, interactive resumes, marketing
yourself, etc.) Off-campus- we have ongoing relationships with 3 schools and are frequent visitors to their
campuses. We have also partnered with elementary schools in the county to assist with STEM efforts. We will
continue those efforts this year. We have also built an identity both on and off campus through our projects and
will continue to market our STARS identity. We frequently bring in IT leaders and have relationships with the
City of Tallahassee, State Government, and other large employers. STARS is developing a speakers database to
be used by the College to identify, track, and select speakers for different events.
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
There are 12 students (including 4 new students this Spring) in STARS funded primarily through
stipends. Students focus on projects at the community level, industry level, college level, and K-12
level. We have a female majority and are working to develop a core. Turnover is an issue because
students usually transfer into our IT program and graduate in 3 semesters. The IT program has 360
majors but only 15 freshmen. We will be working in the next semester to find a way to reach out to
incoming freshman. One of the goals of STARS is to recruit freshmen to reduce attrition and create
members that have institutional history to guide outreach efforts.
Page 20 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
Grad
UG
Females Females
0
1
0
5
0
1
0
1
0
8
SLC Participants
African American
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American & Pacific Islander
Total
SLC Project Types
8
Community Service
3
Mentoring
4
Marketing
9
TOTAL
24
UG Males
1
3
0
0
4
Total
2
8
1
1
12
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
12 @ $500
# SLC with no stipends
0
SLC Meeting Frequency
Twice/month
SLC Meeting Attendance
95%
# Marketing Kits Distributed
0
# Returning & New SLC
9 returning, 3 new
2010 Celebration participation
# SLC Attendees
7
# SLC Posters
7
# SLC Talks
4
# Faculty Talks
3
# SLC
K-12 Outreach
Grad
Males
0
0
0
0
0
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Primary audience attendee information
Outreach Activity
#
Primary audience
Career Day
225
Community/College Outreach
Game Day
Feed Your Brain
142
Community/College Outreach
164
Community/College Outreach
71
Community/College Outreach
22
Community/College Outreach
WISE Recruitment
Hawks Rise Tech
Club
19
Community/College Outreach
20
Elementary School
Nims Tech Club
Tallahassee Gifted
Symposium
Leon County Schools
STEM outreach
TSA Annual
Conference*
10
Middle School
Feed Your Brain NON
IT
WISE – Breakfast
w/students
200
75
1300
Elementary Teachers
Middle/High School TSA
students
Girls Robotics Camp
Senior Citizens
Training*
250
Community
SQL User Group
150
Industry
Going Green
17
Elementary School
50
Middle School
Community/ College Outreach
Web Marketing
250
College Outreach
Masters in IT Survey
200
College Outreach
Godby Career Night
50
High Schools
Ethnicity and
gender
60% Female
30% AA
30% Female
33% AA
25% Female
30% AA
35% Female
30% AA
100% Female
40% AA
100% Female
60% AA
60% Female
10% AA
25% Female
100% AA
50% Female
30% AA
80% Female
40% AA
60% Female
25% AA
100% Female
90% AA
75% Female
40% AA
40% Female
15% AA
50% Female
25% AA
50% Female
33% AA
25% Female
25% AA
60% Female
90% AA
Event Length
How
long one
person
attends
5 hours
1 hr
225 hrs
1 6-hr event
3 events, 4
hours each
3 events, 4
hours each
2 hrs
284 hrs
4 hrs
656 hrs
4 hrs
284 hrs
1 4-hr event
4 hrs
88 hrs
1 2-hr event
2 hrs
38 hrs
12 1-hr visits
12 hrs
240 hrs
12 1-hr visits
12 hrs
120 hrs
1 8-hr event
2 hrs
400 hrs
1 3-hr event
4 days, 8
hours/day
2 days, 6
hours per day
3 hrs
225 hrs
2 hrs
2600 hrs
6 hrs
204 hrs
12 2-hr visits
2 hrs
500 hrs
3 2-hr events
5 3-hour
meetings
2 hrs
300 hrs
3 hrs
150 hrs
10 3-hr events
3 hrs
750 hrs
5 3-hr events
3 hrs
600 hrs
1 4-hr event
4 hrs
200 hrs
Total
contact
hours
Page 21 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
AWI Capital Event
300
Community/High Schools
Tech Days @ schools
250
High Schools
Tech Days @ FSU
250
High Schools
Why ICT Videos
10
College Outreach
Why IT Videos
28
College Outreach
Totals
OVERALL REACH
Female
Male
Caucasian
African American
Other
75% Female
33% AA
45% Female
20% AA
45% Female
20% AA
50% Female
30% AA
30% Female
30% AA
1 4-hr event
4 hrs
1200 hrs
4 6-hr events
2 hrs
500 hrs
4 6-hr events
2 hrs
500 hrs
3 5-hr events
1 hr
10 hrs
3 5-hr events
1 hrs
280 hrs
10,354
total
contact
hrs
296
4,053
Fall
2009
44%
56%
53%
43%
4%
Spring
2010
48%
52%
41%
55%
4%
Fall
2010
48%
52%
55%
38%
7%
Spring
2011
55%
45%
55%
39%
10%
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
We have successfully introduced an IT leadership course - offered Summer of 2010 (28 students)
AND in the Fall of 2010 (23 students). We expect to offer this every semester.
SLC Recruiting
Recruitment is done through the website and through presentations to IT/computing students at
Career Day, Club Day, and Game Day. We also recruit through social media (twitter, Facebook,
blogs)/ The high visibility of our group (STARS) within the 360 strong IT student body is due to the
numerous events we host.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Grants
X-Day events (Career Day - $1000, Club Day - $500, and Game Day - $2000) are supported by local
businesses and the FSU Foundation. General expenses (food, drinks) are donated to STARS by the
Academic Liaison and the PI.
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
News Articles
All programs/events are visible on the College website. We received press coverage for our
involvement in the Digital Harmony Project and the WISE Women Peer mentoring initiative. We
were listed in the news article that focused on our participation at the State Capitol Event. One of the
teachers that we worked with a Hawk Rise wrote an article for the local paper on our participation
with their school. We have had visibility of our projects in the last 3 College student newsletters.
Spring 2011 - http://slis.fsu.edu/content/download/53231/437291/April2011.pdf
Winter 2011 - http://slis.fsu.edu/content/download/50696/352149/AITP_2011_Spring.pdf
Fall 2010 - http://slis.fsu.edu/content/download/38927/245701/2010_Summer_CCI_Newsletter.pdf
Page 22 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Hampton University
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Jean Muhammad
Academic Liaison: Chutima Boonthum-Denecke
SLC & Mentoring Coordinator: Chutima Boonthum-Denecke
C-STARS Faculty:
Pair Programming Faculty: Jean Muhammad
Mentorship Program Faculty: Chutima Boonthum-Denecke
Evaluation Assistant: Hasani Burns, Christopher Peele
Partners:
Community: Admission Office,
School of Science
Demonstration Projects
STARS Leadership Corps, Pair Programming, Mentorship
Program
STARS Alliance Committees
Alliance Steering, Celebration
Organization
SUMMARY
Following the STARS Alliance’s mission, Hampton STARS continue our participation in the STARS
Leadership Corps, Pair Programming, and Freshman Mentorship Program.
Successes
Hampton STARS continues its foci on
retention and recruitment of programs in
Computer Science department – (1) provided
student academic support through peer tutoring
program, (2) continued the pair programming
in our programming I laboratory, (3) enhanced
our freshman mentoring program initiated last
year, and (4) supported/encouraged students to
Figure: WIC meeting
apply for internships or summer research
experience via ACM/WIC meetings and
information sessions.
Lessons learned
The accountability of the mentoring program still need improvement. Many of mentees did not report
to their mentors, making it hard to keep track and assist on issues. Still continue an issue, students,
who are in needs of help, do not seek help their need and that the department has provided. As our
SLC students getting to upper level (i.e. seniors), it becomes harder for them to contribute on SLC
projects.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
SLC students are tutors for lower-level courses (such as Programming I/II, Data Structure I/II) and /or
mentors; they helped promoting STARS and help sustain STARS activities in the department. ACM
student chapter and Women-In-Computing club are also organized as a part of Hampton STARS.
Community Building & Computing Identity
On campus, SLC students are a part of recruiting efforts where they would talk to our prospective
students, such as during high school day. Our SLC students also visited local middle/high schools
and able to talk with middle/high school students of their experiences in majoring in computer science
or computer information system; and college experience. We also encourage our students to apply for
summer internship to gain more experience as well as to pursue a graduate study.
Page 23 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Mentoring
We continue our mentor-mentee group. And not
only that each group has male and female
mentors, they are also mixed class, i.e.
sophomore with junior or senior. This will allow
the freshmen to familiar with various
classification’s course load and internship
opportunity. We also did not have freshman
graduate this year, but instead postpone to Fall
semester. So, that those who really complete CS2
(i.e. CSC 152) will receive a certificate of
Figure: Scratch Workshop for Spraley Students
accomplishment.
There were 12 STARS mentors (6 male and 6 female); 52 mentees (CSC/CIS freshmen or sophomore
who just taking CSC freshmen courses (i.e. CSC 151/CSC 152), and transfer students). There were 6
groups ( 2 mentors and 8-9 mentees).
Events
Retreats with mentors and mentees: 4
Event#1: Mentorship pairing, in conjunction with the ACM club meeting;
Event#2: Bowling night
Event#3: Dine-out at Mongolian Grill ; and
Event#4: ACM picnic.
Pair Programming
Continue the pair programming in programming I laboratory. Data has been collected and reported.
A comparison between this semester and previous semester/year is in process.
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
Spring 2011, Hampton STARS consists of 14 SLC students.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
Grad
Females
UG
Females
7
7
Grad
Males
UG Males
7
Total
14
7
14
Page 24 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
SLC Project Types
# SLC
K-12 Outreach
14*
Community Service
14*
C-STARS
0
Mentoring
12*
Research
6*
Internship
0
Marketing
0
TOTAL
46
* Each SLC work more than one projects
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
13(each @500)
# SLC with no stipends
1
SLC Meeting Frequency
Once a month
SLC Meeting Attendance
8-12
# Marketing Kits Distributed
# Returning & New SLC
7 returning; 7 new
2010 Celebration participation
# SLC Attendees
16
# SLC Posters
9
# SLC Talks
0
# Faculty Talks
0
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
We continue our foci on retention—how can we retain students in the computing programs (either
CSC or CIS). All of Hampton SLC students work as a tutor for first four computer science sequences:
CS 1/2 and Data Structure 1/2. In addition, 2-3 students assisted in the Programming I lab.
In addition to a tutoring program, we utilize the ACM student chapter as a way to talk with students
about computing careers. Addition information sessions have been arranged, where various company
came and talked with our students about internship and employment opportunities. As we introduced
the mentorship program for incoming freshmen, we pair-up students (mentor and mentee) as well as
hosting various events to build relationship amongst students and faculty.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach Activity &
Description (including
CSDT used)
Programming II - Group
Tutoring/Student session
every Thursday (extra
lab)
Primary audience attendee information
Primary audience Grade level or role
(e.g. 7th grade,
middle, high, parent,
Ethnicity and
#
teacher, counselor)
gender
610
Undergrad
10 AA
(2 F; 8 M)
# and
frequency
One a
week for 5
weeks
Average
once a
week for
10 weeks
Once a
week
12 weeks
Tutoring – count each
student / visit / 1 hour
(may repeat; approx)
30
Undergrad
30 AA
(10 F, 20 M)
Pair-Programming Lab
20
Undergrad
20 AA
(6 F, 14 M)
Mentoring contact hours
52
Undergrad
52 AA
(15 F, 37 M)
WIC meeting
Outreach –high school
day
10
Undergrad
10 AA – F
10 weeks
One a
month – 3
100
High School
100 AA
One time
Totals
222
41 visits
Duration of one
visit
2
Average of 1
hour (to even out
for those with
more hours and
more visit; and
some with less
contact)
2
Average of 1
hour per week
(to even out for
those with no
contact in the
week)
0.5
0.5
56 total hrs
Total contact
hours
10*5*2 =100
hrs
30*10*1= 300
hrs
20*12*2 = 480
hrs
52*10*1 =520
hrs
10*3*.5 = 15
hrs
100*1*.5 = 50
hrs
1465 total
contact hours
Page 25 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Events for STARS Leadership Corps Students
Event Title
ACM officer/ SLC meeting
Location
CSC Department
#
SLC
10
Pair-programming
Mentorship facilitator
meeting
CSC Department
CSC Department
4
12
Description
Discussed activities/planned for Spring semester – focusing on
mentorship program.
One a week meeting with the pair-programming instructors
Discussed planned for the social events; prepared documents for
freshmen/mentees; and freshman graduation
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
Hampton University has ACM student chapter that actively meet with students majoring in Computer
Science and Computer Information system. SLC activities are a part of existing ACM student chapter.
This will help an awareness of the students in major as well as non-computing majors, especially
during home-coming weekend or any institution events, which involve all student
organizations/chapters. In addition, WIC club also help promote computing among female students
in the Computer Science department.
SLC Recruiting
Currently, SLC students are recruited by an invitation. Co-PIs identified strong academically and
socially students and invite them to be a part of Hampton STARS. Various projects are introduced
and students opt on their selection. In many case, SLC students are asked or assigned to participate in
certain projects as Co-PIs see fit.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Posters (not refereed)
(**) Blaize Blackmon, Jessica Jones, Gheric Speiginer, Briana Johnson, and Sommer Moore. Retaining
Students in Computing Majors through Tutoring. Richard Tapia 2011 Conference, San Francisco, CA.
Page 26 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Johnson C Smith University
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Magdy Attia
Academic Liaison: Magdy Attia
SLC & Mentoring Coordinator: Hang Chen,
Lijuan Cao
Partners:
Community: Black Data Processor Association
Discovery Place
E.E. Waddell High School
Cisco, CPCC
K-12: Wilson Middle School
SUMMARY
During the Fall semester of 2010 and Spring semester of 2011, ten students worked on the following
projects:
• Robotics Outreach Program: The outreach program aim to engage and empower K-12
students in the field of computing. There are two stages in the program. In the first stage,
SLC students served as assistants to help faculty advisors train 12th graders during the
Robotics workshop. In the second stage, SLC students teamed with 12th graders who have
participated in the workshop and served as mentors for 6th graders. The role of the mentor is
to assist K-12 students build, program, and participate in the robotics competition at the
Discovery Place.
• Wilson Middle School Outreach Program: The outreach program is for the mentor and the
mentee to build a trusting relationship, through which, the middle school students can build
his/her self-esteem. The role of the mentor is to help the mentee explore his/her own
academic interests and encourage them to enter careers in engineering, math and science. The
students will present lessons to middle school students, publish informative newsletters,
establish news group, etc.
• Campus tour for K-12 students.
• Disseminate the results through scholarly publication and presentations on national and
international conferences.
Successes
As a HBCU, JCSU STARs continue to work with under-represent community, broaden participation
in computing, encourage minority students to pursue undergraduate in the related fields of computer
science and engineering, and build community relationship with local K-12 schools, education
institutions, IT enterprises, etc.
Lessons learned
‐ Time management and organization are very important, especially with data collecting and
reporting.
‐ It is important to establish and maintain connections with student organizations, industrial
partners, and education institutions/organizations.
‐ We will develop and provide a report template to students for them to record each activity in the
future, which will make the data collecting and reporting easier.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
‐ SLC students earn Community Service Hours for their outreach program.
‐ STARs events are advertised through flyers, university email system, and classroom
announcement.
‐ The department of CSE provides research scholarship to the most engaged SLC participants.
Page 27 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
‐
‐
‐
Integrate the SLC program with college and department marketing, outreach, and recruiting
efforts.
Recognition of STARS on campus has been heightened by ensuring STARS faculty and students
are nominated for awards
Participation in recruiting and learning communities through presentations by SLC students and
STARS faculty.
Community Building & Computing Identity
‐ On campus, SLC students are now integral to college marketing and recruiting efforts, conducting
tours and giving presentations on their projects and on computing.
‐ In the local community, the SLC students have reached out to several CMS schools and arranged
events for K-12 students.
‐ Nationally, SLC attended the national conference to present their activities and apply for
scholarship.
‐ In Fall 2010, SLC students established BDPA Chapter at Johnson C. Smith University.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
In Fall 2010, the SLC consists of 10 undergraduate students. Two faculty members from the
Computer Science and Engineering department serve as the advisors. The SLC students mainly
conduct outreach programs. Throughout weekly meetings with faculty advisors, the SLC members
made plans for outreach activities, discussed issues and updated project progress. All the SLC
students are supported by stipends. Furthermore, most of our SLC students also participated in
summer research projects, and supported by other grants. In Spring 2011, the SLC contains the same
students as Fall 2010.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
SLC Project Types
# SLC
K-12 Outreach
1
Community Service
1
C-STARS
0
Mentoring
0
Research
0
Internship
0
Marketing
0
TOTAL
2
Grad
Females
0
0
0
0
0
UG
Females
6
0
0
0
0
Grad
Males
0
0
0
0
0
UG Males
4
0
0
0
0
Total
10
0
0
0
0
0
6
0
4
0
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
# SLC with no stipends
SLC Meeting Frequency
10 @ 500
0
Weekly for 14
weeks
SLC Meeting Attendance
80%
# Marketing Kits Distribtued
0
# Returning & New SLC
3 returned &7 new
2010 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
0
# SLC Attendes
0
# SLC Posters
0
# SLC Talks
0
# Faculty Talks
0
Page 28 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
In Fall 2010 and Spring 2011, participants have been working in groups on the following projects:
1.
Robotics Outreach Program: The goal of the program is to engage and empower K-12
students in the field of computing. There are two stages in the program. In the first stage, the faculty
advisors held a two-day robotics workshop at Johnson C. Smith University. 12th graders from E.E.
Waddell High School and staff from Discovery Place participated in the workshop to learn basic
robotics knowledge, as well as building and programming LEGO robots. In the second stage, 6th
graders participated in the robotics competition at the Discovery Place.
Activities:
‐ In the first stage, SLC students served as assistants to help faculty advisors train 12th graders
during the Robotics workshop.
‐ In the second stage, SLC students teamed with 12th graders who have participated in the
workshop and served as mentors for 6th graders. They assist K-12 students build, program,
and participate in the robotics competition at the Discovery Place.
2.
Middle-School Outreach Program: The goal of the program is for the mentor and the mentee
to build a trusting relationship, through which, the middle school students can build his/her selfesteem. The role of the mentor is to help the mentee explore his/her own academic interests and
encourage them to enter careers in engineering math and science. The mentors presented lessons to
middle school students, published newsletters, established news group, etc.
Activities:
‐ Speak with Wilson Middle School administrators and computer teachers in reference to
creating a set time where we can present our presentations
‐ Create a mini-curriculum to implement in Wilson Middle School computer class
‐ Conducted surveys to measure student’s evaluation of presentations in order to create
successful applied methods
3. Community involvement
‐ Participated in the JCSU Open House events.
‐ Organize the campus tours for Wilson Middle school students.
‐ Established the BDPA Chapter at Johnson C. Smith University.
4. Disseminate the results through scholarly publication and presentations on national and
international conferences.
‐ Present on the Carolinas Women In Computing conference.
‐ Present on the North Carolina OPT-ed Conference.
Page 29 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Fall 2010
Outreach
Activity
Robotics
Workshop at
JCSU
Robotics
Competition
at Discovery
Place
Middle
School
outreach
Primary audience attendee information
Ethnicity and
#
Primary audience
gender
1 WF, 2 WM,
1 High school teacher,
3 HM,
9 12th graders, and 1
3BF, 2BM
11 discovery place staff
16 6th graders and 1
teacher, 1 high school
2 WF, 2 WM,
teacher, 5 12th graders
and 2 discovery place
2 HM, 10 AF,
9 AM
25 staff
2 WF, 1 WM,
2 HF, 4 HM, 5
15 7th graders and 7
BF, 8 BM
22 8th graders
# and
frequency
Duration of one
visit
Total contact hours with each
attendee
2, weekly
3
66
6, weekly
2
300
8, weekly
1.5
264
# and
frequency
Duration of one
visit
Total contact hours with each
attendee
6, weekly
2
264
11, weekly
1.5
396
11, weekly
1.5
429
20, every
Tuesday and
Thursday
48 visits
1
65 Total Hrs
480
1569 Total Contact Hrs
Spring 2011
Outreach
Activity
Robotics
Competition
at
Discovery
Place
Middle
School
outreach
Middle
School
outreach
Middle
School
Outreach
Totals
Primary audience attendee information
Ethnicity and
#
Primary audience
gender
th
15 4 graders and 1
teacher, 1 high
2 WF, 2 WM,
school teacher, 5
th
2 HM, 10 AF,
12 graders and 1
6 AM
22 discovery place staff
0 WF, 0 WM,
2 HF, 3 HM,
9 BF, 7 BM,
th
24 24 8 graders
3 others
2 WF, 0 WM,
2 HF, 3 HM,
10 BF, 6 BM,
th
26 26 8 graders
3 others
1WF, 0 WM,
4 HF, 2 HM,
8 BF, 8 BM,
th
th
24 24 7 / 8 graders
1 others
96
Events for STARS Leadership Corps Students
Event Title
CISCO Adopt-An-Academy Kickoff
Adopt An Academy Cisco Day
JCSU Open House
JCSU Open House
BDPA Chapter Kickoff
Location
JCSU
Cisco
Office
JCSU
JCSU
JCSU
CPCC Discussing Section
JCSU
#
SLC
10
8
5
10
3
10
Description
Meet and discussed with the CISCO staff about the Program
CISCO site visit, meet with mentors, and filed application for the
program
Demo research projects to 12th graders
Demo research projects to 7th and 8th graders
Kickoff event of establishing the BDPA Chapter at JCSU
Meet with CPCC faculty members, discussed about establishing
possible mentorship between JCSU and CPCC.
Page 30 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
Johnson C. Smith University has an HBCU-UP office on campus, which provides great opportunities
to students with computer science and engineering as well as other STEM majors. SLC activities are
support by HBCU-UP office, which will help an awareness of students in major as well as noncomputing majors.
SLC Recruiting
We recruit SLC members by soliciting students through email, flyers on campus, and word of mouth
from current SLC students. Interested students go through an application process, where faculty
members select eligible candidates.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Abstract Refereed Papers or Posters in Conference Proceedings:
1. ** Coleman, K and Calhoun, K. Enlighten, Engage, and Empower the Young Generation in
Computing. Carolinas Women In Computing, Columbia, SC, Nov 12-13, 2010.
2. * Graham, K, Cadet, P, and Green, L. Explore information in image and speech. Carolinas
Women In Computing, Columbia, SC, Nov 12-13, 2010.
3. ** Nalls, M, Stewart M, and Williams, T. Emergency detection and relief using robotics. 9th
Annual NC OPT-ED, Nov 12, 2010.
4. * Jenkins, C, Gordon, R, and Prince, T. Build a Sensor Network for Natural Disasters Monitoring
and Emergency Management. . 9th Annual NC OPT-ED, Nov 12, 2010.
News Articles
1. Charlotte Observer: The next generation of rock stars might be geeks.
Materials (Presentations, posters, handouts) developed for outreach K-12, teachers, counselors
1. Curriculum developed for training K-12 students to program LEGO robots.
Page 31 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Meredith College
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Kristin Watkins
Academic Liaison: Kristin Watkins
SLC Coordinator: Kristin Watkins
Pair Programming Faculty: Kristin Watkins
Demonstration Projects
Pair Programming
STARS Alliance Committees
Alliance Steering Committee
SUMMARY
The mission of the Meredith College STARS Alliance chapter is to provide outreach on our campus,
at local schools, and in our community to encourage interest in computing careers. The Meredith
College STARS participate in the STARS Leadership Corps which consists of 3 undergraduate
students for the spring semester of the 2010-2011 academic year.
Successes
The Meredith College STARS chapter contributes
to the Alliance through best practices for a small
school. Meredith’s SLC students demonstrate
strong leadership skills and are actively engaged in
the community.
Lessons learned
With only one faculty member involved in STARS,
time management and organization are critical to
collecting and reporting data and providing support
for the SLC.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
We are currently investigating options for implementing a school wide Student Leadership Corps as
part of Meredith’s Center for Women in Science and Math. We are also exploring additional funding
sources to support an institutionalization plan.
Community Building & Computing Identity
Participation in Meredith’s SLC has built a stronger community among students involved in the
program. Through collaborative projects and participation in meetings and campus activities the
students have formed a strong bond and become friends. This sense of community among our
computer studies students has attracted additional majors to our programs and provides a foundation
for future networking.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Pair Programming
During the spring 2011 semester, one faculty member in the department has implemented Pair
Programming in two introductory computer classes. These classes have a total of approximately 40
students. Feedback shows that the pair programming has been well received by both students and the
faculty member. Future plans include the continued use of pair programming in this course.
Page 32 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
Meredith College currently has 3 students participating in the Student Leadership Corps. A faculty
member from the Computer Science department serves as advisor to the group. During the first year
or two of participation, students tend to choose projects that focus on outreach or community service.
After a year or two in the program, students typically choose some kind of undergraduate research
experience or internship as their project. This semester students have been involved in community
service, undergraduate research and internship projects.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
SLC Project Types
Community Service
Research
Internship
# SLC
1
1
1
Grad
Females
UG
Females
Grad
Males
UG Males
Total
3
3
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
# SLC with no stipends
SLC Meeting Frequency
SLC Meeting Attendance
# Marketing Kits Distribtued
# Returning & New SLC
3 @ $500
Bi-weekly
95%
3 returning
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
For three of Meredith's SLC students, their primary leadership project was developing outreach
workshops targeted at high school girls. These workshops were given during the Girl Scout
TechnoQuest event that was held in early November on Meredith's campus. Workshop topics
included Scratch Programming and Careers in Computer Science. In addition, one SLC student had a
internship at SAS Institute for the semester where her primary responsibility involved testing user
interfaces. We are very happy to report that this student will graduate in December and has accepted a
full time position with SAS Institute.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach
Activity
Research
Presentation
Totals
Primary audience attendee information
# of
Primary
Ethnicity
attendees
audience
and gender
College
20
students
women
20
# and
frequency
Duration of
one visit
Total contact hours with each
attendee
1
1 Visit
1/2 hour
.5 hrs
10
10 total contact hours
SLC Recruiting
Meredith College SLC students are recruited through faculty recommendations, and student
recommendations.
Page 33 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
North Carolina A&T University
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Gina Bullock
Academic Liaison: Gina Bullock
SLC & Mentoring Coordinator: Monique Jones
C-STARS Fac., Evaluator, Co-PI: Gina Bullock
Lead Evaluator: DaNae Grubbs
Evaluation Graduate Assistant:
Pair Programming Faculty: Gina Bullock
Evaluation Assistant: Richard Artis
Demonstration Projects
STARS Leadership Corps, Pair Programming,
Mentoring
Partners:
North Carolina A&T State University
• Institution type: doctoral-research extensive
• College of Engineering
• Computer Science Department
STARS Alliance Committees
Community Team, Mentors, and Outreach
Program
SUMMARY
The goal of NC A&T STARS Alliance is to encourage students to
continue to pursue computing disciplines, expose them to potential
career opportunities, and by fostering a sense of community help
retain students in these fields. The activities they take part in will
help them to develop and refine technological skills as
freshman/sophomores.
Successes
NC A&T is a leader for STARS in retention, having established a close knit community in which the
needs of our mentees are the main focus. Outreach programs to middle school students are a
continuing interest for our program as well. We have also been particularly successful at promoting
community service through providing multiple opportunities for our mentors and their mentees to
volunteer their time for communal projects.
Lessons learned
Team work, communication, and effective mentoring practices are strong depictions of success for
our STARS Alliance. Weekly group meetings and responsibility dependence on each member allows
their participation to have a desire and purpose and thus have continued progress.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
Our STARS events are known throughout our Computer Science community through department
flyers and classroom announcements to freshman. Our call for freshman to participate in these
activities with their mentors develops awareness of our SLC and creates interests for current mentees
to eventually become mentors themselves in the future.
Community Building & Computing Identity
Social Events include a trip to the movies and mall with other mentees to help create social
relationships with peers. As well as a UPE/ACM/STARS programming competition that brought out
friendly competition between the mentees. A celebration for students completing their first year of
college is the last event planned for this semester to help encourage retention for first year students.
The mentors invited their mentees and the freshman class to a prepared workshop to assist them in
getting ready for the Spring Career Fair. Since the majority of students needed personal assistance
with editing their resume, the mentors set up a Professional Development packet and critiqued/edited
freshman resumes individually.
Page 34 of 69
STARS Alliance Narrative Report
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Alliance support
12 SLC mentors
Mentoring
The STARS Mentoring program at NC A&T includes 12 SLC mentors and 75 non-SLC freshmen
mentees in the Computer Science Freshman Learning Community.
The table below describes the typical interaction type and frequency for mentors and mentees for the
semester, and the number of events held as part of the mentoring program for the semester.
Mentor-mentee communication type, frequency
Phone: once a week
Email: occasional
Face to Face: once a week
Events
Seminars attended together 5 per semester
Outreach attended together 5 per semester
Mentor training sessions: 1 per semester
Retreats with mentors and mentees: none
STARS Leadership Corps
In Spring 2011, the corps consisted of 12 undergraduate students. Our SLC’s mission is to provide
outreach on our campuses, at local schools, and in our communities to encourage interest in
computing careers. Outreach Project is a few mentors prepared for a mini robotics competition and
instructional day for middle school and elementary school students that came in for Java and Robotic
and Retention Day. During this session students and parents learned how to build, program, and
control NXT Robots. Another event was the aforementioned refurbishing project with the Handy
Capable Network. Mentors in the Stars program provided services for the younger students in the
computer science department. These services included helping compile next semester schedules,
giving presentations on healthy habits for students, resume workshops, tutorial services, UML
workshops, directing to helpful organizations and clubs, and guidance in programming competitions.
Recruiting
We have an application process for interested mentors and conduct interviews with the applicants for
available SLC positions.
SLC student oriented
events
Handy Capable
Network
Spades Tournament
Fundraiser
Location
Greensboro,
NC
Greensboro,
NC
SLC
5
20
Description
Assisted non-profit organization, Handy Capable Computers, with catching up on
backlogged assignments. Learned how to diagnose hardware and software issues,
while refurbishing necessary computer parts.
The funds received from the second Spades Tournament will go towards sponsoring
the pizza dinners for our mentees during our upcoming Game Night event.
Primary audience attendee information
Outreach Activity
Java and Robotic
Boot Camp (NXT
Robotics Session)
#
Primary audience
Ethnicity and gender
25
MS, HS, and Incoming
Freshman Students
35% minority (mostly African
American), 30% female 50% white
10%Hispanic 5% Asian
Interviewing Tips &
Resume Workshop
Java and Robotic and
Retention Day
25
Non-SLC College,
undergraduate
100% minority, 40% female
30
ES, HS, Freshman,
100% minority, 40 female 80%
Totals
80
#, frequency
Duration
of one visit
Total
contact
hours
1 per
semester
8 hrs
200 hrs
2 hrs
50 hrs
4 hrs
14 Total
Hrs
120 hrs
370
Total
1 per
semester
1 per
Semester
3 visits
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North Carolina State University
http://www.stars.ncsu.edu
http://www.stars.ncsu.edu/blogs
Staff and Roles:
Laurie Williams, NC State PI and Pair
Programming Demonstration
Project Director
Mladen Vouk, NC State Co-PI and
Regional STARS Liaison
Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Academic Liaison
Joseph Grafsgaard, SLC Leader
Partners:
NC State Department of Computer Science
St. Augustine’s College
Shaw University
Centennial Campus Middle School
Durham Nativity School
Lowe’s Grove Middle School
Citizen Schools
U.S. Committee for Refugees & Immigrants
Cisco
Duke Energy
Network Appliance (NetApp)
SAS
Tekelec
STARS Alliance Committees:
Alliance Steering, Mentoring Advisory Board
Demonstration Projects:
STARS Leadership Corps, Pair Programming,
Mentoring
SUMMARY
The NC State STARS chapter has the following
goals:
4) Retaining our existing students and increasing
diversity of the student leadership body
through research, internships, mentoring, and
outreach projects that help build our students’
identities as successful information
technology (IT) leaders,
5) Attracting new students onto this leadership
path,
6) Actively reaching out to students in middle
STARS presenters at our Fall 2010 Poster Session
and high school to stimulate interest in
pursuing computing as a career, and to strengthen the diversity in the student population
interested in IT, and
7) Making these efforts sustainable over the long term by institutionalizing STARS activities.
Successes
NC State is a leader in peer and IT leadership mentoring; graduate students mentor undergraduate
students with a central focus on STARS research, outreach, or service projects. Our middle school
and service outreach programs have now expanded to five locations. We have continued our
leadership in pair programming. Our freshman-level programming class and junior-level software
engineering courses have been using pair programming with great success since 2000. Our research
focus continues to prepare students for graduate school. Industry internships provide our students
with practical work experience.
Lessons learned
Regular mentoring meetings and interactions are essential. We have re-emphasized the students’
stipend-based core responsibilities to ensure that students hold weekly mentoring meetings, write
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STARS-themed blog posts, and stay actively involved in Student Leadership Corps (SLC) projects.
Our weekly mentoring pairs graduate mentors with undergraduates to provide guidance and support
and ensure continuous involvement of all SLC members. Strengthening this structure reduced the
administrative overhead on the STARS coordinators, while providing greater visibility into the SLC
efforts.
Sustainability involves engagement of existing student organizations, industrial partners and outreach
organizations. We plan to increasingly leverage our NC State student organizations to bring in student
volunteers outside of the stipend-based SLC. Strong and productive interactions with IT industry are
essential, as is outreach into K-12 schools and civic organizations. These interactions illustrate the
general relevance of IT in today’s life and emphasize the benefits of our discipline while providing
valuable support from partner organizations.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
NC State SLC activities are sustained, and are being institutionalized, through three complementary
components: 1) stipends for the most active SLC participants; 2) industry support for SLC activities;
and 3) involvement of volunteers from the NC State STARS and other student organizations. The NC
State College of Engineering and NC State Department of Computer Science regularly provide
stipends for faculty-supervised undergraduate research. Since January 2010, this funding has
augmented NSF-provided SLC stipend support to sustain and increase the number of supported SLC
participants. In addition, our STARS student chapter has received industry support facilitated through
the NC State Computer Science Department’s ePartners program. Our industry partners have donated
a total of $60,000 over four years toward support of our student research, outreach, and community
service projects. Industry representatives from five industrial partners are expected to attend local
STARS events this academic year. We have increased volunteer integration, with five volunteers now
active in the NCSU STARS student organization. Involvement of student organizations offers a
sustainable path for increasing participation and visibility of SLC efforts.
Our institutionalization efforts synergize with our service, outreach, and recruiting efforts to provide
greater visibility for STARS. At the early undergraduate level, students in our freshman-level
programming course and our junior-level Software Engineering courses practice pair programming as
part of their assignments. Additionally, our tutoring program for introductory programming helps
retain students new to our department and raises awareness of our organization. As a department
organization we represent STARS in the annual Engineering Welcome Back Bash by tending a
STARS booth and serving on the event committee. Hundreds of engineering students come to the
event, and many of them came by to ask about our Student Leadership Corps and the STARS
Alliance, as part of a student
SLC group photo at our Fall 2010 Poster Session
organization crossword puzzle.
Each semester, we hold a
poster session in a highly
visible common area to
showcase our projects. There
is a link to our website on the
departmental website, and
news stories about the
successes of our students have
been
featured
in
our
department’s news feeds.
These efforts, along with our
significant commitments in civic organizations and middle school outreach activities, continue to
establish our STARS student leadership corps as a presence across our spectrum of communities.
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Community Building & Computing Identity
This Spring marks the end of the third year of our tutoring program for students in NC State’s
Department of Computer Science introductory programming course. STARS SLC students worked
with the introductory programming students to help them with their assignments, help them prepare
for exams, and help them adjust to life on campus. Additionally, we have started a tutoring program
for discrete math, attended by undergraduates in computing-related majors. Our middle school
outreach programs have continued to introduce students at three Triangle-area middle schools to basic
computing concepts. The middle school students in our two newest middle school outreach locations
are mostly composed of groups that are currently under-represented in IT occupations. Research
shows that in middle schools the interest in IT is still evenly distributed across diverse student groups.
By strengthening that interest, and by providing insights into computer science and IT in general, we
hope to provide additional momentum that would draw additional K-12 students into IT careers. We
are involved in a technology transfer and exploration project focused on wireless mesh networking in
the City of Raleigh, which is now in the evaluation phase. Our STARS website serves as our web
identity and as a focal point for our projects; it is continually updated.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Alliance support
The STARS program at NC State has thirteen undergraduate and fourteen graduate students as our
stipend-based SLC. As part of our activities, we have continued our participation in the STARS
Alliance Identity-Based Mentoring Demonstration project, building on our previously-designed
mentoring curriculum and recruitment program.
Mentoring
Our mentoring program provides fundamental support for our students. We have implemented a
hierarchical mentoring structure, with graduate mentor to undergraduate mentee pairings.
Additionally, our SLC outreach members provide mentoring to undergraduates in our department’s
introductory programming course, as well as middle school students.
Pair Programming
At NCSU, instructors have implemented pair programming in our freshman-level programming
course and our junior-level software engineering course. Approximately 150 students take the
programming course and 50+ students take the software engineering course each semester.
STARS Student Leadership Corps
In Spring of 2011, a number of research and outreach projects are underway or have already been
completed.
Undergraduate Research Projects: “iTutor: A System for Assisting Learning Programming and
Testing,”
“Analyzing Faces of Confusion During Learning,” “Designing and Building a PressureSensitive Seat,” “Setting the Scene for Narrative Theatre,” and “Wireless Mesh Networking
in Raleigh.” Our
research projects prepare SLC undergraduates for graduate school through practical
experience, and facilitate mentoring relationships between graduate students and
undergraduates.
Outreach Projects: The SPARCS (Students in Programming, Robotics, and Computer Science)
Middle School
Outreach program targets middle school students with sessions on the exciting potential of
pursuing a career in computing. The SPARCS program continued at Centennial Campus
Middle School and Durham Nativity School. Additionally, we participated in the Citizen
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Schools program for the third time, offering a 10-week LEGO Robotics apprenticeship
outreach at Lowe’s Grove Middle School.
Mentoring Projects: Each of the undergraduate SLC students has a graduate student mentor through
the SLC. In addition, some of our SLC students mentor area middle school students through
our middle school outreach activities mentioned above, and other SLC students tutor
undergraduates in our introductory programming course.
Internships: During Spring 2011, two students participated in an internship as their primary project,
with positions at Tekelec and Kidde Aerospace. Additional students participated in
internships as their secondary projects, working at SAS, ITNG, NC State DELTA, and
Siemens Energy.
Institutionalization: The NCSU STARS SLC is a recognized campus student organization. As such it
has additional rights, privileges and duties and is more visible and accessible to the broader
student population. Our website is now linked from the Computer Science Department’s
website to increase students’ awareness of our organization. The Department of Computer
Science actively supports the STARS program and a plan is in place to further strengthen that
support in the future.
Sustainability: The NCSU STARS SLC activities are being integrated with the Computer Science
Department’s ePartners external relations program. Through that program, our SLC has
received funding that supports its activities beyond what the NSF grant provides. Funding
from our ePartners program is essential to our continuation of STARS as a long-term
departmental program. Because of the importance of diversity, retention and workforce
issues, the Computer Science Department also provides additional support for coordination of
the SLC program.
The entire corps participated in an NC State poster session in December 2010 where students
showcased their semester projects. Students, faculty, industry, and community attendees discussed the
SLC students’ projects and goals. The poster session also serves as a recruiting event. This year’s
poster session drew approximately fifty attendees and provided valuable visibility for the SLC. In
April 2011, our STARS members spread awareness of our activities and recruited new members
during our STARS Recruiting Week. Approximately one hundred graduate and undergraduate
students conversed with STARS members at our recruiting booth.
Students in our SLC also complete regular blog entries where they discuss assigned topics, from
STARS-related discussions to project updates. The student blogs have become a core responsibility of
our stipend-based SLC students. Through these blogs, students can look back and track their progress
and accomplishments. Coordinators also use the blogs to monitor the progress of student projects.
This approach is particularly effective when combined with the weekly mentoring meetings. Links to
our SLC students’ blogs can be found at our member roster: http://www.stars.ncsu.edu/blogs
Recruiting
We actively recruit students every Spring semester through fliers, posters, and email invitations. Our most
successful forms of recruiting have been personal invitations, where advisors and faculty members are asked to
personally recommend students; word-of-mouth, where students mention the program to each other; and our
STARS poster sessions, which are held in a high-traffic common area. We held a STARS Recruiting Week
event in April 2011, and are currently accepting applications from prospective STARS members. We also
attended a booth at the College of Engineering Open House in March 2011 to recruit incoming freshmen and
promote visibility of our SLC within the broader community.
Grants
CSC ePartners funding 2010-2011: NCSU STARS Student Leadership Corps. ($12,500)
Sponsors are Cisco, Duke Energy, NetApp, SAS, and Tekelec.
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Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Refereed Journal Proceedings
1.
Scott McQuiggan, Jennifer Robison, and James Lester (2010). Affective Transitions in NarrativeCentered Learning Environments. Educational Technology & Society, 13 (1), 40-53.
Refereed Conference Proceedings
2.
Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Eun Young Ha, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk and
James C. Lester. Dialogue Act Modeling in a Complex Task-Oriented Domain. In Proceedings of the
11th Annual SIGDIAL Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue, Tokyo, Japan, 2010, 297-305.
3.
Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Amy Ingram, Eun Young Ha, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A.
Vouk, and James C. Lester. Characterizing the Effectiveness of Tutorial Dialogue with Hidden Markov
Models. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2010, 55-64. (Best Student Paper Award Nominee.)
4.
Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Eun Young Ha, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk and
James C. Lester. A Preliminary Investigation of Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models for Tutorial
Planning. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Educational Data Mining, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, 2010, 285-286.
5.
Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, William Lahti, Robert Phillips, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, and
James C. Lester. Principles of Asking Effective Questions to Improve Student Problem Solving. In
Proceedings of the 41st SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE
'10), Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2010, 460-464.
6.
Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, E. Nathan Thomas, Audrey S. Rorrer, Deonte Cooper, and Mladen A. Vouk.
Increasing Technical Excellence, Leadership and Commitment of Computing Students through
Identity-Based Mentoring. In Proceedings of the 41st SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer
Science Education (SIGCSE '10), Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2010, 167-171.
7.
Fendt, MW. Dynamic social planning and intention revision in generative story planning. In the
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, pages 254255, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM.
8.
Nagappan, M., Vouk, M.A., “Abstracting Log Lines to Log Event Types for Mining Software System
Logs.” Accepted in Mining Software Repositories (Co-Located with ICSE 2010), 2-3 May, 2010, Cape
Town, South Africa.
9.
Nagappan, M., ”Analysis of Execution Log Files.” Accepted in the Doctoral Symposium track of the
32th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2-8 May, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa.
10. Jennifer Robison, Scott McQuiggan and James Lester. Developing Empirically Based Student
Personality Profiles for Affective Feedback Models. In Proceedings of the Tenth International
Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS-2010), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 2010.
11. Jonathan Rowe and James Lester. Modeling User Knowledge with Dynamic Bayesian Networks in
Interactive Narrative Environments. To appear in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE-10), Palo Alto, California.
12. Rowe, J. P., Shores, L. R., Mott, B. W., Lester, J. C. (June 2010). Individual Differences in Gameplay
and Learning: A Narrative-Centered Learning Perspective. In Proceedings of the Fifth International
Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), Monterey, CA.
13. Rowe, J. P., Shores, L. R., Mott, B. W., & Lester, J. C.. (June 2010). Integrating Learning and
Engagement in Narrative-Centered Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the Tenth International
Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), Pittsburg, PA. (Nominated for Best Paper Award)
14. Rowe, J. P., Shores, L. R., Mott, B. W., & Lester, J. C.. (June 2010). A Framework for Narrative
Adaptation in Interactive Story-Based Learning Environments. In Working Notes of the Intelligent
Narrative Technologies III (INT-III) Workshop 2010, Monterey, CA.
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Refereed Symposium and Workshop Proceedings
15. Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Robert Phillips, Eun Young Ha, Michael D. Wallis, Mladen A. Vouk, James
C. Lester. Leveraging Hidden Dialogue State to Select Tutorial Moves. In Proceedings of the Fifth
NAACL HLT Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications, Los
Angeles, California, 2010, 66-73.
16. Julius Goth, Alok Baikadi, Eun Young Ha, Jonathan Rowe, Bradford Mott, and James Lester.
Exploring Individual Differences in Student Writing with a Narrative Composition Support
Environment. In Proceedings of the First NAACL HLT Workshop on Computational Linguistics &
Writing (CL&W), Los Angeles, California, pp. 56-64, 2010.
17. Padmashree Ravindra, Vikas V. Deshpande, Kemafor Anyanwu, Towards Scalable RDF Graph
Analytics on MapReduce, To appear in proceedings of International Workshop on Massive Data
Analytics over the Cloud(MDAC, co-located with WWW 2010), April 2010, Raleigh
18. Jennifer Robison and Lucy Shores. Supporting Collaborative Learning in Narrative-Centered Learning
Environments To appear in Proceedings of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing .
Atlanta, Georgia, 2010.
19. Jonathan Rowe, Lucy Shores, Bradford Mott, and James Lester. A Framework for Narrative
Adaptation in Interactive Story-Based Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the FDG'10
Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies III, Monterey, California, 2010.
Presentations
20. Boyer, Kristy Elizabeth. A Teacher for Every Learner: Authoring Intelligent Natural Language
Tutoring System Behavior. Presented at the STARS Annual Celebration, August 2010, Orlando,
Florida.
21. Boyer, Kristy Elizabeth. Getting Things Done: Productivity for Computing Students and Professionals.
Presented at the STARS Annual Celebration, August 2010, Orlando, Florida.
22. Nietfeld, J. L., Shores, L. R., & Cao, L. (accepted for May 2010). Can Motivation and Beliefs Scales
Predict Classroom Performance? The 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research
Association (AERA-2010) Denver, CO.
23. Shores, L. R. & Nietfeld, J. L. (accepted for May 2010). Challenges and Potential Solutions to
Encourage Self-Regulation in Game-Based Learning Environments. In Proceedings of the 4th Biennial
Meeting of the EARLI Special Interest Group 16 Metacognition, Muenster, Germany.
Events and Outreach Impact
Outreach Activity
SPARCS @ CCMMS Middle School
Outreach.
Taught basic computing concepts to
students at Centennial Campus
Magnet Middle School.
SPARCS @ DNS Middle School
Outreach.
Taught basic computing concepts to
students from Durham Nativity
School at our NC State pair
programming facilities on Centennial
Campus.
USCRI Refugee Outreach.
Taught computer literacy skills to the
local refugee community, connected
to refugees through the USCRI.
CSC116 (Introductory Programming)
Student Tutoring.
Primary audience attendee information
Ethnicity
#
Primary audience
and gender
# and
frequency
Duration
Total contact
hours
Middle
60% AfricanAmerican,
40% white.
33% female.
3, Once a
month for
academic
year
(to Apr. 9)
5 hours
14 attendees *
3 visits * 5 hrs
=
210 hours
Middle
75% AfricanAmerican,
25%
Hispanic.
0% female.
3, Biweekly
for
academic
year
(to Apr. 9)
3 hours
117 hours
15
Refugee community
Ethnicity not
available.
13% female.
3 hours
225 hours
40
University freshmen,
undergraduates
20% AfricanAmerican,
2 hours
(average
80 hours
14
13
5, Weekly
for
academic
year
(to Apr. 9)
14, Weekly
office hours
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Provided tutoring to students in our
introductory programming course.
Senior Citizens Outreach.
Helped senior citizens at a local
rehabilitation center become more
comfortable with using computers.
Citizen Schools LEGO Robotics.
Taught robotics skills to middle
school students at Lowe’s Grove
Middle School.
STARS Recruiting Week.
STARS members discussed the SLC
with interested students in the main
lobby of the East Wing of Engineering
Building II (Dept. Computer Science).
Totals
interested in or
entering a computingrelated major
5% Hispanic,
5% Asian,
70% white.
50% female.
during
academic
year
(to Apr. 9)
Senior citizens
67% white,
33% other.
100%
female.
2 sessions
in Spring
2011
3 hours
18 hours
10
Middle
40% AfricanAmerican,
40%
Hispanic,
20% white.
50% female.
5,Weekly
sessions
from March
10
(to Apr. 9)
1.5 hours
75 hours
100
University students
Not
available.
2, April 6 &
7
3.75
hours
750 hours
88 Total
Hrs
1475 Total
Contact Hrs
3
195
session)
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SPELMAN COLLEGE
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Andrea W Lawrence
Academic Liaison: Andrea W Lawrence
SLC & Mentoring Coordinator: Andrea W Lawrence
SUMMARY
This spring, participation was included student research, students serving as peer instructional leaders
and teaching assistants, and creation of recruiting (road show) materials..
Successes
Geek Week (Fall 2010) was a success. However, the planned Spring follow-up was canceled. The
plan for next Spring is to have a Geek Week reprise. SLC members participated in research, some of
which was presented at conferences. Other members served as student peer leaders and teaching
assistants. In these roles, they are able to encourage others to remain in or select the Computer
Science major or minor.
Lessons learned
This year has been somewhat difficult because it was not clear how STARS would fit into the
department under the new chair, Andrew Williams. However, agreements have been made and the
lesson learned is the importance of clear communication channels.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
The plan at Spelman is to have a STARS SLC club that will meet regularly. It will be open to those
not formally in the SLC who wish to participate in outreach activities.
Community Building & Computing Identity
STARS has helped build a better community by providing exposure to the breadth of the discipline
and opportunities in the field through Geek Week and the Olympiad.
Mentoring
This year mentoring took place through having members of the SLC serve as Student Peer Leaders
and Teaching Assistants. In these roles, they were able to meet with computer science majors and
potential computer science majors to help them with their courses. However, they also became “big
sisters” to the students and were able to help them in making choices about remaining in the major
and selecting summer opportunities that would be helpful for their computing future.
Pair Programming Although Pair Programming is not a formal part of the Spelman STARS plan,
students in the first programming course are strongly encouraged to use pair programming techniques
for their final project.
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
This year there were three members of the Spelman College SLC. They participated in the Fall Geek
Week and preparation for and participation in the Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad held
in Tallahassee at FAMU in conjunction with the ARTSI Conference. Management was informal this
year, generally consisting of individual meetings with members.
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Projects for this Spring were:
1. Undergraduate research
2. Preparation for and participation in the Spelman College Computer Science Olympiad
3. Preparation of materials for future road shows
4. Participation as Student Peer Leaders and Teaching Assistants
5. Students did not receive any stipends this spring. The Student Peer Leaders and Teaching
Assistant received support with non-STARS funding.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
SLC Project Types
K-12 Outreach
# SLC
2
Community Service
0
C-STARS
0
Mentoring
2
Research
2
Internship
3
Marketing
0
TOTAL
9
Grad
Females
0
0
0
0
0
UG
Females
3
0
0
0
0
Grad
Males
0
0
0
0
0
UG Males
0
0
0
0
0
Total
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
0
# SLC with no stipends
3
SLC Meeting Frequency
Bi-weekly
SLC Meeting Attendance
# Marketing Kits Distribtued
30
# Returning & New SLC
3
2010 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
0
# SLC Attendes
0
# SLC Posters
0
# SLC Talks
0
# Faculty Talks
0
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
This year the plan for setting up a STARS club was successfully routed through the department chair
and the associate provost for approval for upcoming years.
SLC Recruiting
SLC students are recruited from majors doing well in the first two courses who show an interest in
outreach and community activities
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Institutional Website
Geek Week was featured on the Spelman College Web site.
Materials (Presentations, posters, handouts) developed for outreach K-12, teachers, counselors
Some road show materials were developed for K-12 student outreach
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UNC Charlotte
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Teresa Dahlberg &
Tiffany Barnes
Academic Liaison: Karen Bean
SLC Coordinator: Karen Bean
C-STARS Faculty: Tiffany Barnes
Evaluator: Audrey Rorrer
Evaluation Graduate Assistant: Laura Hassey,
Hannah Rinehardt
Pair Programming Faculty: Lorrie Lehmann
Evaluation Assistant: Shaun Pickford
Demonstration Projects:
Pair Programming, REU, CSDT
Partners:
Community:
K-12: Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, Cabarrus
County Schools, Citizen Schools, McClintock
Partners in Education, NC First Robotics
Central Piedmont Community College
STARS Alliance Committees:
New Members, Continuing, Mentoring,
Executive Steering Committee
SUMMARY
The mission of the UNC Charlotte STARS Alliance chapter is to serve as a model for Alliance
Demonstration Projects and institutionalization, to provide leadership to the Alliance, to evaluate and
disseminate findings, to find ways to sustain and grow the Alliance, and to promote the Alliance and
best practices for Broadening Participation in Computing. The UNC Charlotte STARS participate in
the STARS Leadership Corps, C-STARS, and Pair Programming. This year, we welcomed STARS
Scholars, recipients of a new scholarship for transfer students.
Successes
UNC Charlotte is a leader in the Alliance in sustainability with a credit-bearing course for the SLC.
We have also been particularly successful at promoting student leadership in the SLC through the
our outreach teams: High School Outreach, Team Hope and McClintock Middle School Outreach,
and GameCats arrange and carry out computing outreach at local K-12 schools. The Transfer
Outreach team targets community college students. Another strength we have is attracting SLC
students to graduate school; the majority of our SLC students plan to go to graduate school in
computing. We have 4 former SLC students who are the recipients of the prestigious NSF graduate
fellowship.
Lessons learned: We have strengthened our course structure by focusing on Leadership theory and
skills in the initial seminar course and following that with a team projects-based course. Moodle is
used for team management and for student posting of their reflections. This semester, the seminar
course included 10 non-computing majors. These students’ participation in team service-learning
projects exposed them to the broader applications of computing and encouraged them to consider
computing as a major and career goal.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability In the Fall of 2011, we will begin offering an Engagement
Course, required for all new computing students (freshmen and transfers). This course will introduce
students to the social relevance of computing as well as form a sense of community among computing
students. SLC students will guest lecture on outreach activities and research in the effort to recruit
additional STARS Alliance participants and to increase the computing pipeline.
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Community Building & Computing Identity
The SLC mentors computing students and will begin serving as role models to incoming students via
the new Engagement Course.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Pair Programming
Number of instructors implementing 2, No stipends awarded
Number of classes at your school implementing pair programming and approx number of students in
each type of class one class per semester- 19 labs -300 students
First year introductory courses ITCS1212
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
The mission of our SLC is to provide outreach on our campuses, at local schools, and in our
communities to encourage interest in computing careers. The corps is organized into five leadership
teams: Team Hope, High School Outreach, GameCATS, Transfer Outreach and McClintock Middle
School Outreach. Each team organizes and implements its outreach activities and collaborates with
other teams when needed or when a group activity is planned.
Team Hope- Team Hope worked with the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID)
program in middle and high schools. They also developed and facilitated a web design and
journalism club for the after school program.
High School Outreach Leadership Team- Continuing with the success of their road show, this
team created new presentations about enrolling in college and studying computing science.
Expanding their influence in the community, they returned to schools previously visited and made
connections with more local schools.
GameCATS Team- This team partnered with Citizen Schools to develop and deliver a game design
apprenticeship to middle schoolers in the Citizen Schools after-school program. They are working
with the national office of Citizen Schools to develop reusable lesson plans in game design.
Transfer Outreach Team- This is a new team whose focus is to mentor community college
students and other students interested in transferring to UNC Charlotte as computing majors.
McClintock Team- This team partnered with McClintock Partners in Education by developing and
facilitating a Computing Concepts Club during McClintock’s weekly family night. SLC students
used Computing Unplugged activities to teach computing concepts and generate interest in
computing.
The entire Corps hosted an outreach event in the College of Computing and Informatics this year by
providing lab tours and computing presentations for high school students participating in
Communities in Schools Job Shadowing. The Corps also assisted in the Julia Robinson Math and
Computing Festival held at UNC Charlotte by hosting booths that taught 7th grade girls about game
design, robotics, computing concepts, and virtual humans. UNC Charlotte hosted a regional NCWIT
Aspirations in Computing Award event and SLC students assisted with this event and lab tours for the
award winners.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American & Pacific Islander
other
Total
Grad
Females
UG
Females
3
1
3
1
2
10
Grad
Males
UG Males
4
1
13
1
1
20
Total
7
2
16
1
2
2
30
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SLC Project Types
K-12 Outreach
Community Service
C-STARS
Mentoring
Research
Internship
Marketing
TOTAL
# SLC
22
8
30
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
5 @ $500 each
# SLC with no stipends
25
SLC Meeting Frequency
weekly
SLC Meeting Attendance
25 to 30
# Marketing Kits Distribtued
0
# Returning & New SLC
30
2010 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
10
# SLC Attendees
9
# SLC Posters
4
# SLC Talks
5
# Faculty Talks
7
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Primary audience attendee information
Outreach Activity
#
Transfer Tuesday
17
Set up Science Fair
Science Fair
Presentation at
Central Piedmont
Community
College
Non-SLC College,
undergraduate
250
K-12 parents and
students
300
K-12 parents,
students, teachers
and counselors
14
Julia Robinson
Math and
Computing
Festival
Community in
Schools Shadow
Day
255
Citizen Schools
10
Totals
Primary audience
12
College instructors,
professors
Middle school
students, grades 6-8
High school
students, grades 912
Middle school
students, grades 6-8
Ethnicity and gender
White – 8 African American – 6
Hispanic – 3
58% male, 42% female
White – 60% African American – 10%
Hispanic – 15% Asian – 10% Nonwhite, but cannot estimate – 5% 60%
male, 40% female
White – 60% African American – 10%
Hispanic – 15% Asian – 5% Non-white,
but cannot estimate – 5%
60% female, 40% male
White – 14% African American – 14%
Hispanic – 21% Asian – 28% Nonwhite, but cannot estimate – 23%
51% female, 49% male
White – 35% African American – 50%
Hispanic – 5% Native American – 2%
Asian – 5% Non-white, but cannot
estimate – 3%
100% female
White – 8% African American – 92%
Female – 42%, Male 58%
White - 0% African American – 90%
Hispanic – 10%
# and
frequency
Duration
of one
visit
Total
contact
hours
1–
Monthly
2 hours
2
1 - Once
6 hours
6
1 - Once
5 hours
5
1 - Once
2 hours
2
1 – Once
3 hours
3
1 – Once
10 –
Weekly
3 hours
3
2 hours
20
41
total
contact
hours
858
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
The SLC course is a permanent course offered as a repeatable elective.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Grants
NSF S-STEM: This grant provides scholarships to students who transfer into a computing major.
Students, known as STARS Scholars, receive a competitive academic scholarship to support their
completion of their bachelor degree in 2 years, and their masters degree by 3 years. STARS Scholars
conduct outreach and are SLC members.
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Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Refereed Journal Proceedings
Dahlberg, T., Barnes, T. Buch, K., & Rorrer, A. (accepted, to appear 2011). The STARS Alliance:
Viable Strategies for Attracting, Retaining, Supporting, and Developing Underrepresented Students in
Computing. Association of Computer Machinery, Transactions of Computing Education, Special
Issue on Broadening Participation.
Dahlberg, T., T. Barnes, K. Bean, & K. Buch. (in review). Engaging Under-represented Computer
Science Students in Service: An Innovative Course and Case Study Findings. Submitted: Computer
Science Education.
Posters (not refereed)
Bean, K., Buch, K., Finkelstein, S., & Grant, J. (2010) Engaging nnder-represented computing
students through service and outreach. Poster presented at the National Outreach Scholarship
Conference in Raleigh, NC on October 4-6, 2010
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University of New Orleans
Staff and Roles:
Academic Liaison: Jaime Nino
Pair Programming Faculty: Jaime Nino
Evaluation Assistant: Jay DiMartino.
Partners:
Brittany Morgan, ScienceREACH coordinator,
Communities in Schools in New Orleans, Inc.
Demonstration Projects
STARS Leadership Corps, Pair Programming
SUMMARY
The mission of the UNO STARS Alliance chapter is to promote the computing field opportunities to
high schools, to promote retention in the Computer Science program, and to promote best practices
for Broadening Participation in Computing. The UNO STARS participate in the STARS Leadership
Corps, Peer tutoring and Pair Programming.
Successes
UNO STARS continues to do best at peer tutoring, by having established an intensive tutoring
program for freshman and sophomore enrolled in programming. The 5 SLC students involved loved
the activity and students look for them, and during weekend they tutor via email!
We have not been particularly successful this semester in promoting student leadership in the SLC
through the High School Outreach program due to the fact that currently we only have 1 student fully
involved in this activity. Although he has visited a school once this semester and has another visit
plan for the end of April, the number of activities off campus does not match what they have done in
previous semester.
Lessons learned
We need to maintain a larger list of students interested in STARS activities, so that when students
drop from the program for different reasons, we have a pool of students to tap. This semester was
very hard to manage the group to do outreach activities as the two STARS students who lead the
team, who I now realized did a great job, are not anymore in the team (One graduated and left the
other had to drop this semester). I ended up with 5 students with four of them doing tutoring.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
A 1-hour credit bearing course has been establish where students can sign up for STARS activities.
As of the fall of 2010, we expect students to sign up for this course.
I am happy to report that as of this writing the current success of the Peer Tutoring has been very
well received by the instructors and department chairs of the courses being positively affected by it:
Computer Science and College Of Engineering.
We as a campus-wide organization have participated in 2 campus-wide events.
We continue with the use of Pair Programming in the labs of CS1 and CS2.
We established a tutoring lab for students taking courses in programming at the CS1 and CS2 levels.
Community Building & Computing Identity
On campus, the SLC students continue being recognized as students active in retention, recruiting and
in promoting computing.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Alliance support
SLC students: 5 supported via $500 per student and per semester.
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Pair Programming
2 Instructors.
CS1 two sections, CS2 Part I one section. Total number of students 54
STARS Leadership Corps
In the Spring, the corps consisted of 1 graduate and 7 undergraduate students.
Our SLC’s mission is to provide tutoring to students in intro programming courses, and outreach on
our campuses, at local schools, and in our communities to encourage interest in computing careers.
This semester activities consisted of visiting counselors (3) and visit student groups 5 k12, 1
Community college.
SLC Student Demographics
# Graduate,Undergrad SLC: 1,7
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
Females
0
0
0
2
0
Males
0
0
3
0
2
Total
0
0
3
0
2
5
5
5
Primary SLC Project Type
K-12 Outreach
Peer tutoring
# SLC
1
4
Recruiting
Designed fliers for STARS teams, STARS Alliance, and Tutoring. Distribute those through campus
and send emails to ACM chapter and Engineering Chapter. Meet with students of those chapters.
Events and Outreach Impact
SLC student oriented events
Peer tutoring
Location
Campus
SLC
Attendees
280+ hours
Description
Tutoring for CS1, CS2 material for CS, engineering students
Primary audience attendee information
Outreach Activity &
Description (including
CSDT used)
High School visits. Answer
questions about college and
future plans of the students.
#
Primary audience
Ethnicity and
gender
# and
frequency
2
Senior students (plus
2 teachers )
100% male
1 visit
Peer Tutoring*
20
mixed
14 weeks
1 time
event
Recruiting Event at UNO
2
TOTAL
24
Prospective majors
for CS
mixed
Duration
1-1/2 hour
2 hrs
weekly
3 hours
32.5 Total
Hrs
Total
contact
hours with
attendees
3 hrs
40 hrs
6 hrs
49 Total
Contact
Hrs
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University of South Florida
Staff and Roles
PI and Project Manager:
Dr. E. Nathan Thomas, III
Academic Liaison:
Deonte Cooper
Mentor Facilitators:
Jim Hernandez
Evaluation Assistant
Katherine Borja
Partners:
Sleepy Hill Middle School
Polk State College Lakeland
Polk County School Board
Polk State College Winter Haven
Hillsborough Community College
Association of Information Technology
Professionals (AITP)
USF Tampa Computer Science Dept
Alliance Members
USF Polytechnic Multicultural Education and
Engagement Office (ME & E)
USF Polytechnic IT Dept.
PSC Collegiate Facilitator: Sallie Brisbane
AITP Contact: Cliff Bennett
K-12 Outreach Teacher: Angela Chapman
SUMMARY
USF Polytechnic STARS continues its goal of fully implementing two facilitators supervising two
groups of mentors and their mentees. During the Spring semester we focused on strengthen our
STARS structure, so that students could have a path to know what was expected of them and their
responsibilities. We concentrated on bringing more help in for Amanda with developing the My
Mentor App. by bringing in Codi Apgar (mentee) to assist in researching and meetings. Jim continued
to work with his efforts at Sleepy Hill Middle School weekly by working with Ms. Amy Hamilton’s
class in the Technology Student Association (TSA). He also became the data collector of our
Promoting Academic Success Boys of Color (PASBOC) program, as we begun to merge PASBOC
under STARS as an outreach program. Mrs. Chapman continued to work with the STARS program in
developing the academic component of the Summer Camp and the monthly STARS Socials. This
summer she wants to implement more Culturally Situated Design Tools (CSTDs).
Successes
One of our successes was implementing a Facebook group for our USF Polytechnic students and
alumni, so that we could update students in a fast way because students check their Facebook more
than they check their email.
Our program learned and grew this year by developing a curriculum path for students to go by so they
will know what is expected out of them from the program. The students have two different paths they
can go with our STARS program “less strenuous” or “more strenuous.” The less strenuous is being a
member of the STARS club and being able to participate in some STARS activities. The more
strenuous going students are able to select activities laid out for them to choose from e.g. community
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service, outreach, STARS Exchange. After the students select what they are interested in to
participate, they have a description, responsibilities, and outcome they should receive out of the
activity.
Our students also participated in another Program under ME&E, PASBOC through the Polk County
School Board. The STARS students were mentors to students that were in 1st -3rd grade mentees. All
STARS students were given a four hour training and became mandated reporters. These mentees were
cluster mentored in a 1:3 ratio for up to 60 minutes a week. The mentees were given activities during
these 60 minutes based on the Thomas Principles. The STARS mentors collected data in five different
ways, assents (permission for child sign), consents (permission for parent sign), Teacher Mentor
Engagement Forms (a monthly assessment of the student), 3 different Surveys (Pre-Test, Post-Test 1,
and Post-Test 2), logs (tracks what activity was done with mentee), and Plans (the overall goal for
each month). This program was a 5 year program that ME&E took over the last year that ended at the
end of the 2011 school year. Our STARS program wants to merge it into one of our service programs
because our mentors already have the relationship with the mentee. Our program also will Use one of
the treatment schools (Wahneta Elementary) for our Math and Technology Summer Camp this July.
Our greatest success has been witnessed in one of our youngest and brightest students Katherine
Borja, who started with STARS in 2011 as a Collegiate High School student. Katherine exemplifies
the STARS pipeline and demonstrates outstanding leadership as a STARS mentee and a PASBOC
mentor. As a STARS leader Katherine finished her semester by winning the 2011 Minority
Achievement Award for attaining a 3.5 grade point average and above in regular education classes.
Katherine will be graduating High School this June and in December she will also receive her A.A. in
multimedia.
Lessons learned
We continue to learn in our program that having a stronger structure will keep students better engaged
and motivated. Furthermore, we learned that having a strong set curriculum for students to follow will
help students to stay engaged. We are continuing to use our STARS family philosophy to keep strong
bonds between mentees, mentors, facilitators and the Academic Advisor.
More important, everyone is being help at a higher student of research with having projects down
early and correctly.
We also learned about time conflictions because our program began with 14 students but during the
Fall 2010, we had a 50% drop off. The conflicts that we had with our program were students that
were full time were not able to participate because of time constraints with class, students that had
jobs were not able to participate, and students that were constrained because of other priorities to
other organizations.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
We continue to institutionalize our program by having our STARS students working in collaboration
with our IT faculty. We also continue to use STARS as a best practice to secure more grant dollars so
our students can work as employees for the university instead of seeking outside employment. Lastly,
we are in the process of getting USF Polytechnic STARS Adviser position institutionalized this June.
This would mean that this position now comes out of the Multicultural Education & Engagement and
College of Technology and Innovation Budgets.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
At USF Poly our STARS Demonstration Project serves as our SLC. Program events and details are
included under STARS Leadership Corp.
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Mentor-mentee communication type,
frequency
Phone: occasionally
Email: frequently (Facebook, Text Msg)
Face to Face: once a week
Events
Seminars attended together: 5 per semester
Outreach attended together: 6 per semester
Mentor training sessions: STARS Celebration
Retreats with mentors and mentees: STARS Celebration
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
Starting this Spring we have 7 students out of the original 14 returning. As an SLC we continue to
implement our Tired Mentoring Model. In our program we have an advisor who coordinates the
structure and duties of the group. Below the advisor we have two facilitators and mentors who give
the advisor support. The advisor, facilitators and mentors work together to conduct meetings, program
events/outreach activities, and monitor contact between mentors and mentees by analyzing timesheets
and logs.
The mentors are responsible for helping the facilitators conduct outreaches/events, and most
importantly stay in contact with their assigned mentee with weekly reports to their facilitator. Lastly,
the mentee/mentors are required to attend meetings, help with events, participate in outreach
activities, stay in contact with their assigned mentor, and report to their facilitator. The mentees in our
program are also mentors because they e-mentor our K-12 Jr. STARS students.
Alliance support
SLC students: 14 supported via the grant. Facilitator - $625 per student. Mentor - $500 per student.
Mentee-Mentor - $250 per student. We are looking at our alliance support to use with Dr. Alfredo
Weitzenfeld and his robotics competitions. Our students will travel with him internationally to
México, Turkey, Singapore, etc. to go to these competitions.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
Spring 2011 SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
*Collegiate High School (HS) participants are students completing courses at Polk State College
Collegiate Collegiate
Grad
UG
Grad
HS
HS
SLC Participants
Females Females Males UG Males Females
Males
Total
African American
0
0
0
1
1
0
2
Asian
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
Caucasian
0
4
0
1
2
0
7
Hispanic
0
1
0
1
1
1
4
Total
0
5
0
4
1
4
14
New Recruits Fall 2011-2012 SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
*Collegiate High School (HS) participants are students completing courses at Polk State College
Collegiate Collegiate
Grad
UG
Grad
HS
HS
SLC Participants
Females Females Males UG Males Females
Males
Total
African American
0
1
0
2
0
1
4
Asian
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Caucasian
0
3
0
2
0
0
5
Hispanic
0
2
0
3
1
0
6
6
0
7
1
1
15
Total
0
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
Spring 2011 SLC Details Continued
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
14 & $625, $500,
$250
# SLC with no stipends
0
SLC Meeting Frequency
once a week
SLC Meeting Attendance
90%
# Marketing Kits Distributed
10
# Returning & New SLC
2 returning, 12 new
2010 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
3
# SLC Attendees
14
# SLC Posters
5
# SLC Talks
1
SLC Project Types # SLC
K-12 Outreach
14
Community Service
14
C-STARS
0
Mentoring
7
Research
7
Internship
0
Marketing
10
TOTAL
57
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
The goal of our outreach events were to impact and increase student awareness and knowledge about
technology and computing. Our outreach efforts have resulted in an increase interest of our STARS and USF
Poly initiatives. This is evident from our success with TSA and our STARS summer Camp.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach Activity
Primary audience attendee information
Ethnicity and
#
Primary audience
gender
# and
frequency
Hispanic Males
1 Visit
# 60/
3 hours
Total contact
hours
4 attendees* 1
visit * 3 hrs =
12 hours
Duration
# 50/
Jr. STARS
4
Elementary School
1 grade
Jr. STARS
4
Elementary School
2 grade
Hispanic Males
3 hours
12 hours
Jr. STARS
Classroom visits:
STARS students
visited USFP
classrooms to recruit
students for STARS
SLC
Table recruitment:
STARS recruited
PSC & USFP
students for STARS
SLC
4
Elementary School
3 grade
1 Visit
# 26/
Hispanic Males
3 Visit
3 hours
36 hours
10 min
8.17 hrs
Totals
26
2 hours
32.12 Total
Hrs
112 hrs
180.17 Total
Contact Hrs
7
7
College students
Mix of Caucasian
African American;
Hispanic, Asian,
female and males
College students
Mix of Caucasian
African American;
Hispanic, Asian,
female and males
#140/
7 visit
#32/
8 visit
20 visits
Events for STARS Leadership Corps Students
Event Title
Location
# SLC
STARS Social: Mindstorm
Programming
Campus
7
STARS Social: Career Building
Campus
7
STARS Social: Microsoft Office
Campus
7
Campus
7
Campus
7
STARS Social: Searching the
internet
STARS Social: Culturally
Description
Students were taught about Rotation, Steering, Power, Looping, Sound,
and Direction) Presentation included Power pints and examples of each
top to see how they work in real life.
Students were taught about Monster Resume Builder, Student Bios,
Pros and Cons of Updating
Students were taught about Word, Power Point, Excel, Access,
Publisher and Access
Students were taught about Mozilla Firefox, Bing, Google Chrome,
Filters
CSDTs are web-based software applications that allow students to create
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Situated Design Tools
STARS Social: LAN Party
simulations of cultural arts e.g. Native American beadwork, African
American cornrow hairstyles, Youth Subculture urban graffiti, and etc.
Campus
7
Students were playing multiplayer computer games
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
Our STARS club has become a student organization to complement the program. The Student
organization is called the Friends of STARS. This is for students who want to participate in STARS
but only can by attending events because their time is limited. STARS is becoming more connected to
the IT department and ME&E office by having students involved in research projects and
employment opportunities.
SLC Recruiting
Our recruitment phase will begin during the Spring semester in which, mentors will go into USFP
classrooms to speak among their peers about STARS. The advisor and mentors will also go to Polk
State College (PSC), and PSC Collegiate High school campuses in both Lakeland and Winter Haven
to speak to students about the opportunity to become mentees for the STARS program, highlighting
the yearly Celebration, activities, and SLC projects.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Grants
*STARS Alliance Mentoring (2009 Rejected = Very Competitive. 2010 Resubmitted and Rejected
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University of Tennessee
http://utkstars.org
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Teresa Dahlberg
Academic Liaison: Prof. Lynne Parker
SLC & Mentoring Coordinator: Prof. Lynne Parker
Evaluator: Morgan Brackett
Partners:
Community: Tribe One
K-12: Smoky Mountain Home Education
Association
K-12: Area high schools
Demonstration Projects
STARS Leadership Corps, Mentoring, Outreach,
Tutorials
STARS Alliance Committees
New Members, Mentoring
SUMMARY
Our STARS focus this semester has been in three
primary areas: mentoring our first and second year
computing students, videotaping tutorials for our
beginning undergraduates, and participating in
outreach activities, including the UTK Engineering
Day, the SWE Regional Conference Graduate
School Fair, and the FIRST Lego League Regional
Tournament.
Successes: Our students have been especially
UTK STARS at SWE Regional
successful at mentoring our freshman and
Conference Grad School Fair
sophomore undergraduate students this semester.
The peer-to-peer interactions have had positive
benefits for improving the sense of “community” among the
computing students. We have also had success in creating a
new video-based tutorial series for our undergraduate students,
which focuses on topics not ordinarily taught in regular classes.
The SLC has also been active in reaching out to participants at
regional conferences held in our local area.
Lessons learned
Bringing robots and videos to outreach events is an excellent
way to attract students to our outreach booths.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
We are investigating the possibility of requiring our department fellowship recipients to contribute
their time for our mentoring, tutorial, and outreach activities. We have a sufficient number of
fellowship recipients that we might be able to sustain these efforts in this manner. We also are
investigating the inclusion of a computing leadership course (for 1 hour credit) that would involve the
students in traditional STARS SLC activities.
Community Building & Computing Identity
Our mentoring program has been popular with students, generating continued interest by more and
more students in participating in STARS. Having more interactions among the computing students
has helped build a better sense of a computing community among the students at UTK. We hope to
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continue this trend, so that new students can see a larger group of peers who are enjoying their
studies, thus encouraging the new students to join in.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Mentoring
Mentoring has been a primary activity of our SLC students, with 2 undergraduate SLC students and 5
graduate SLC students involved. Each student signs up for regular mentoring hours in one of our two
computing labs; each student holds about 2-3 mentoring hours per week. Mentors are also required to
complete logs documenting the number of students helped and the types of issues the students
discussed. Over 200 students (not distinct) have been helped by the mentors up to the date of this
report. The types of help provided included computing help with various text editors, Linux-related
questions, debugging tools, scripting, system calls, make files, pointer arithmetic, and so forth.
Additionally, the mentors provided higher-level advice on various topics, such as what to expect in
certain courses, or with certain professors, or providing advice about careers, graduate school
possibilities, and so forth.
Tutorials
From the mentoring experiences, the SLC members gained a better understanding of the steep
learning curve that many early computing students experience. To help in this area, the SLC students
have developed and presented about several tutorials on various computing topics (e.g., text editors,
Linux, debugging tools, etc.). These tutorials are aimed at the first- and second-year undergraduate
students. From our previous experience, we learned that on online video tutorial series would reach
more students, and provide less of a scheduling problem. Thus, 2 SLC students worked this semester
on videotaping the tutorials, so that they would be available to a broad student audience.
Mentor-mentee communication type, frequency
The mentor-mentee activities take place primarily faceto-face, with some email contacts. Seven (7) SLC
mentors are available on a regular schedule (published on
our web site) in the labs, for about 15 hours total per
week.
Videotaping of online tutorials took place, to make this
information available to a broad number of students. The
editing of the videos is continuing.
Events
The SLC mentors participated in our Engineering
recruitment day, to help recruit students to computing, as
well as our EECS advising days, to help students with
questions about courses, etc.
The SLC mentors participated by manning recruitment
booths at the Society for Women Engineers Regional
Conference Graduate School Fair and the FIRST Lego
League Regional Competition.
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
All of our SLC students are involved in either mentoring, local outreach, or tutorials. The SLC
students meet weekly with the faculty advisor (i.e., STARS academic liason), where various SLC
activities are discussed. Most of the SLC students receive a stipend, with the amount dependent on
their degree of participation. No other funds are used to support the SLC students.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
Grad
Females
UG
Females
1
1
0
Grad
Males
UG Males
1
3
1
1
4
2
Total
1
0
5
1
7
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SLC Project Types
K-12 Outreach
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
7, $500
# SLC with no stipends
0
SLC Meeting Frequency
weekly
SLC Meeting Attendance
7
# Marketing Kits Distributed
# Returning & New SLC
7, 0
2010 Celebration participation
# SLC Attendees
4
# SLC Posters
3
# SLC
5
Community Service
C-STARS
Mentoring
7
Research
Internship
Marketing
TOTAL
12
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
The SLC team attended UTK Engineering Day, and also manned recruitment booths at the Society
for Women Engineers Regional Conference Graduate School Fair and the FIRST Lego League
Regional Competition.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach Activity & Description
(including CSDT used)
Primary audience attendee information
Ethnicity
and
Primary audience
gender
Mixture
1 visit
6 hrs
100
Freshman in
engineering/CS
Undergrads in
engineering/CS
Total contact
hours
100 attendees
* 1 visit * 6 hrs
= 600 hrs
Mixture
1 visit
3 hours
300 hrs
100
High school students
Mixture
2 days
8 hours
25 Total
Hrs
1600 hrs
2500 Total
Contact Hrs
#
UTK Engineering Day
SWE Regional Conference
Graduate School Fair
FIRST Lego League Regional
Competition
100+
Totals
300+
# and
frequency
Duration
of one visit
4 visits
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
We have had ongoing discussions with our current SLC students, to find out motivations for them
continuing to participate in STARS, and getting their feedback on expectations for future students
wanting to participate in SLC. To a large extent, the primary motivation for these students’
involvement in SLC is that they enjoy helping their fellow students, and they enjoy computing (thus,
wanting others to join them). If this trend continues, we expect that students will want to continue in
this activity because of the sense of community it provides them. It is clear, however, that faculty
involvement must continue, because the students are not well-organized otherwise.
SLC Recruiting
Faculty members describe the STARS mentoring program to their classes, and mentors regularly visit
the programming labs (according to a pre-determined schedule) to help students. We have STARS
web pages and signs posted to make students aware of the mentoring services. We also send emails
to all the teaching assistants of the introductory computing courses to let them know of the mentoring
activities. Through these activities, more senior students become aware of SLC, and new SLC
students are identified.
EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Materials (Presentations, posters, handouts) developed for outreach K-12, teachers, counselors
We have prepared a presentation to be used for high school outreach.
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Virginia Tech
Staff and Roles:
PI and Project Manager: Scott McCrickard
Demonstration Projects
STARS Leadership Corps, Mentoring
Partners:
Virginia Tech
• Center for the Enhancement of Engineering
Diversity (CEED)
• Computer Science Community Service (CS^2)
• Association for Women in Computing (AWC)
• Hypatia
• C-Tech Squared
NASA summer program
K-12: Harding Avenue Elementary
STARS Alliance Committees
Alliance Steering Committee
SUMMARY
The mission of the Virginia Tech STARS Corps is to increase interest and enrollment in Computer
Science, particularly from underrepresented groups. Toward achieving this goal, we recruit heavily
from young engineers while providing a stable foundation of more experienced mentors, and we seek
to integrate research and outreach by encouraging our experienced mentors to reach out to K-12 (and
especially K-5) students. Specifically, we seek to create and enrich the pipeline of students
progressing through Virginia Tech’s required Engineering Education courses to the Computer
Science major. Our philosophy is that engagement in compelling research projects both will
engender ownership of ideas among grad students and undergrads and will produce products that will
later be taken into the community for outreach and recruiting activities. VT-STARS participate in the
STARS Leadership Corps and Mentoring.
Successes:
Our greatest strengths lie in motivating student engagement through intrinsically-rewarding activity
as well as promoting student leadership and mentorship. The interest in our program is driven by
our model to allow students to pool their stipends towards accomplishing student-driven goals. We
found the $500 stipend to be insufficient to motivate student participation, but by pooling resources
students have been able to purchase larger research/outreach-related equipment.
Select students also have the opportunity to take on a leadership role by supervising younger students.
Not only does this allow them to learn how to be a good leader, but it also provides an environment
where informal and meaningful mentorship can take place.
A model for sustainability has taken place through our CS Squared program, and through the
development of a curriculum for upper and lower level undergraduate courses (CS 2994/4994), and
through the development of two-week course modules for freshmen Engineering Education students.
Lessons learned
The most important lesson learned is that there are challenges presented by managing a large group of
students; it is difficult to guide each team through project milestones, to maintain a high level of
involvement with all members, to coordinate meetings, and to gather consistent, timely, and
meaningful data for reporting. We seek the right level of commitment for what is too often viewed an
optional activity, toward establishing consistently-attended meetings at regular times, with milestones
to keep projects moving smoothly.
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It was valuable in Fall 2010 to have one student, DeMarcus Townsend, receive additional support in
cooperation with Dr. Tiffany Barnes at UNCC. The added funding allowed him to quit his job at the
dining hall and devote his time within his chosen discipline of Computer Science. He would not have
been able to do this with a small stipend.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
Our primary model for sustainability is through our Computer Science Community Service (CS
Squared) program, which coordinates service opportunities for regional students. In addition, we are
considering changes within our undergraduate population through the development of a curriculum
for upper and lower level undergraduate courses (CS 2994/4994) and through the development of a
two-week course module for freshmen Engineering Education students. The CS Squared program
currently embodies the outreach focus from STARS, providing an avenue for students to volunteer for
outreach activities. It is helpful that there is connection with our CS 3604 Ethics in Computing class,
whereby students can get credit for taking part in CS Squared.
Community Building & Computing Identity
We began with a diverse group of students that are now a cohesive team that is ready to effectively
reach out to new communities. In Spring 2011 our VT STARS team worked with CS^2 to reach out
to elementary school students at local schools by hosting a demo day highlighting our Fall Semester
development efforts. Also in Spring 2011 our VT STARS team took part in a poster session and
talked with incoming freshman majors.
Nationally, the Project Manager, Dr. Scott McCrickard, is active in the NSF BPC community,
including leadership in a session at the annual meeting in 2008 and attendance at the 2009 annual
meeting. McCrickard is also active in another BPC alliance, A4RC.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
C-STARS: Culturally Situated Design Tools
During the 2010-2011 academic year, there was 1 graduate student and 3 undergrads who took part in
STARS: Greg Wilson (grad), DeMarcus Townsend, Kristin Whetstone, and Jacob George. Only
DeMarcus received a stipend. Outreach activities included a demo day at our local Harding Avenue
Elementary School (12 attendees) and a poster session at Virginia Tech (75 attendees, including 4
potential freshman majors).
The STARS students built a multitouch table and designed software to work on it. The software used
a card metaphor, to leverage the card games played by underrepresented groups (specifically African
Americans and women). The lessons focused on history of computing, mathematical ordering
concepts, resulting in 3 papers at the Human-Computer Interaction International Conference (2) and
Biomedical Research Conference (1).
Outreach
Activity
Multitouch
software
(demo)
Multitouch
software
(poster)
Totals
Primary audience
Ethnicity
and gender
# and
frequency
Duration of
one visit
Total contact
hours with each
attendee
K-5 students (especially
3-5) and their teachers
Mixed
1-time
event
2 hours
24 hrs
Undeclared freshmen
K-5 and freshmen
Mixed
Mixed
1-time
event
2 visits
2 hours
4 hours
150 hrs
174 hrs
#
12 students
75 attendees
(4 potential
majors)
87
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
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SLC Participation & Organization
Four students participated in the 2010-2011 academic year. We meet once or twice a week to talk
about the project in the fall, then we had two demo/poster sessions in the spring. The research efforts
targeted a demoable project that could be taken to schools. One student received a stipend this year.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Native American &
Pacific Islander
Total
SLC Project Types
# SLC
K-12 Outreach
1
Community Service
1
C-STARS
1
Mentoring
1
Research
Internship
Marketing
4
TOTAL
Grad
Females
UG
Females
Grad
Males
1
UG Males
1
Total
2
1
1
1
1
4
1
1
2
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
1
# SLC with no stipends
3
SLC Meeting Frequency
1-2 weekly
SLC Meeting Attendance
2-4
# Marketing Kits Distribtued
0
# Returning & New SLC
4 returning
2009 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
1
# SLC Attendes
0
# SLC Posters
0
# SLC Talks
0
# Faculty Talks
0-1
SLC Outreach Events and Impact
Students demoed their work at a local elementary school and presented a poster at our annual research
symposium, as described previously in this document.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach
Activity &
Description
(including
CSDT used)
Multitouch
CSDT
2
Multitouch
CSDT
2
#
Primary audience attendee information
Primary audience Grade level or role (e.g.
7th grade, middle, high,
parent, teacher,
Ethnicity and
counselor)
gender
K-5, particularly 3-5
University academic,
targeting undeclared
freshmen
Mixed
# and
frequency
1-time
event
Mixed
1-time
event
2 hours
2 hours
K-5 and freshmen
Mixed
2 1-time
events
4 hours
4 hours
4
Totals
Duration of one
visit
Total contact hours with each
attendee
2 hours
2 hours
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
The leadership corps is exemplified in our CS Squared program, as described elsewhere in this document.
SLC Recruiting
Posters and targeted emails.
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EXTERNAL SUPPORT AND DISSEMINATION
Grants
We partner closely with another BPC alliance at Virginia Tech, A4RC. In addition, the academic liaison and
lead evaluator, Greg Wilson, applied for and received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship—one contributing
factor noted in his reviews was his dedication to service-related activities.
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
One of the techniques used to attract students to our SLC published in a highly competitive conference (students
indicated with a “+”, STARS students with a “*”):
Refereed Papers in Conference Proceedings
D. Scott McCrickard, DeMarcus Townsend, Woodrow W. Winchester III, and Tiffany Barnes.
“Leveraging card-based collaborative activities as a culturally situated design tools.” In Proceedings
of the HCI International 2011 Conference (HCII 2011), Orlando FL, July 2011.
Jacob George, Eric de Araujo, Desiree Dorsey, D. Scott McCrickard, and Greg Wilson. “Multitouch
tables for collaborative object-based learning” In Proceedings of the HCI International 2011
Conference (HCII 2011), Orlando FL, July 2011.
Desiree Dorsey, Jacob George, Eric de Araujo, Greg Wilson, and D. Scott McCrickard. “Multi-touch
tables for collaborative learning.” In Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Biomedical Research
Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), November 2010.
Gregory Wilson*, D. Scott McCrickard, Karen DelDuca+, and Timothy Watson+. "Combining
location tracking and RFID tagging toward an improved research infrastructure." In Handbook of
Research on Mobility and Computing, Eds. Maria Manuela Cruz-Cunha and Fernando Moreira, IGI
Global, 2010, to appear.
Jeremy T. Barksdale, Eric D. Ragan, and D. Scott McCrickard. "Easing Team Politics in Agile
Usability: A Concept Mapping Approach." In Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Agile Software
Development (Agile 2009), Chicago IL, August 2009, pp. 19-25.
Shahtab Wahid+, Stacy M. Branham*, Lauren Cairco*, D. Scott McCrickard, and Steve Harrison.
"Picking Up Artifacts: Storyboarding as a Gateway to Reuse." In Proceedings of the IFIP TC.13
Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT '09), Uppsala Sweden, August 2009.
Posters (not refereed)
Chase Carroll, Jacob George, and DeMarcus Townsend. Multitouch applications for
collaborative education. Poster at the VTURCS Research Symposium, April 2011.
Materials
(Presentations, posters, handouts) developed for outreach K-12, teachers, counselors
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Wilberforce University
http://www.wilberforce.edu/nnsa
Staff and Roles:
Kera Z. Watkins – Academic Liaison
Maurice Watkins – Outreach Coordinator
Deborah Love – Student Programs Assistant
Partners:
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Scholars Program at Wilberforce University
Central State University
Air Force Institute of Technology
Sinclair Community College
Cedarville University
Boys and Girls Club of Dayton
Xenia Chamber of Commerce
YMCA of Xenia Ohio
Wilberforce-Xenia Optimist Club
Demonstration Projects
Virtual Simulations
STARS Alliance Committees
Alliance Steering, New Members, STARS
Celebration, Executive Committee
SUMMARY
The mission of the WU STARS Alliance/NNSA chapter is to engage under-represented
undergraduates in relevant research that promotes computational thinking, provide outreach to underrepresented middle and high school students, help students gain leadership training, evaluate and
disseminate findings, and to promote the Alliance and best practices for Broadening Participation in
Computing.
Successes
WU is a new institution that has partnered with NNSA to use an interdisciplinary approach to engage
students from various disciplines into a project that uses computational thinking to benefit society. We
have had the opportunity to allow students to network with
professionals at conferences around the world including
places like Indianapolis, Indiana; Dallas, Texas; Lisbon,
Portugal; and San Diego, California.
Lessons Learned
It has been beneficial to computing students to engage with
students from other disciplines and vice versa. It has
helped the computing students – no matter how small in
number - to not feel isolated from their peers. Also, it has
helped non-computing students find innovative ways to
involve computing into their own disciplines of choice.
For example, one student was exposed to the concept of
bio-computing for the first time and thought it may be a
worthwhile venture for his future.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
We are partnering with a number of schools in our region to expand the concept of institutionalization
of the SLC as a formal organization across the region. For sustainability, we are developing a model
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to provide free basic services to the community, while providing fee-based expanded services to small
businesses to generate revenue for the future of the organization.
Community Building & Computing Identity
Teams of students from various disciplines have competed against one another to design solutions to
help people prepare for disasters. They were taught to design virtual worlds to develop a testing
environment for their designs. The exercises were used to help students engage in computational
thinking in interdisciplinary teams.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
Alliance support
Students are supported either by STARS or NNSA. NNSA supports non-computing students in
general. Computing students in the STARS SLC are also participants in the NNSA Scholars program.
This year, we have had a total of 8 students come through the program.
STARS Leadership Corps
In Spring 2011, the corps consisted
of 5 students. Our SLC’s mission is
to engage in undergraduate research,
provide outreach on our campuses,
at local K-12 schools and
organizations,
and
in
our
communities to encourage interest in
computing careers.
Goals for 2011-2012
•
•
Use CSDTs to introduce computational thinking to K-12 under-represented students.
Get the community engaged in the tools designed to benefit them.
Strategies to Achieve Goals
•
•
Work with local community K-12 organizations to devote weekly blocks to CSDT activities.
Conduct a workshop to train people to use tools that we are designing to benefit society.
Student Participant Demographics
SLC Participants Females
African American 4
Asian
0
Caucasian
0
Hispanic
0
Native American 0
Total
4
Males
4
0
0
0
0
4
Project Types
Total
8
0
0
0
0
8
Recruiting:
1. Flyers and emails for various seminars and volunteers for workshops
2. Informational Sessions
3. Blog of successes
Dissemination (Publications, News and Radio articles, Presentations)
Refereed Journal Proceedings
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1. Watkins, K. Z., Simon-Agolory, K., Venkateswaran, A., and Nam, D. “Get a Plan! Disaster
Preparedness using WILBER,” The 8th International Conference on Information Systems for
Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM), Lisbon, Portugal, May 8 - 11, 2011.
2. Simon-Agolory, K. and Watkins, K. Z. “Preparing Plans! Helping First Responders Prepare
the Population,” 17th World Congress on Disasters and Emergency Medicine, Beijing, China,
May 31 – June 4, 2011.
3. Simon-Agolory, K. “Customized Preparation for the Next Disaster,” 201 Esri International
User’s Conference, San Diego, California, July 11 – 14, 2011.
4. Venkateswaran, A., Simon-Agolory, K., and Watkins, K. Z. “Risk Analysis for Greene County
and Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio: Simulation of Riverine Flooding,” The 8th
International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management
(ISCRAM), Lisbon, Portugal, May 8 - 11, 2011.
5. Watkins, K. Z. “Disaster Preparedness Using WILBER,” Invited Talk at Sandia National
Laboratories, Livermore, CA, March 2011.
6. Watkins, K. Z. and Watkins, M. Towards Minimizing Pair Incompatibility to Help Retain
Under-represented Groups in Beginning Programming Courses, ACM Journal of Computing
Sciences in Colleges, vol. 25, no. 2, pages 221 – 227, December 2009.
7. Watkins, K. Z. "Peer Evaluation as a Needed Web 2.0 Activity in Project Management for
Teaching Practical Software Engineering," Proceedings of the 2009 ACM Special Interest
Group for Information Technology Education Conference, pages 173 – 177, Fairfax, VA,
October 22 – 24, 2009.
8. Davis, M., Watkins, K. Z., and Allen, D. SoTL Commons Conference: A Spirit of Inquiry,
Invited Essay on SoTL, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning,
vol. 3, no. 2, July 2009.
9. Watkins, K. Z. and Cook, R. "Learning to Culturally Whip Up a Computer," Proceedings for
the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, pages 14.1, March 11 – 13, 2009.
10. Bell-Watkins, K., Barnes, T., and Thomas, N. Developing computing identity as a model for
prioritizing dynamic K-12 computing curricular standards. ACM Journal Computing Small
Colleges, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 125 - 131, January 2009.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Outreach Activity
Open House Series –
Disaster
Preparedness
TechFest – K12
Hands On
Technology Fair
Informational
Session
Totals
Primary audience attendee information
Ethnicity and
#
Primary audience
gender
At Wilberforce University.
SLC/NNSA, Academic
95% minority
Liaison, Other WU
(mostly African.
students, Guest
American), 54%
65 Speakers,
female
25% minority
(mostly African.
American), 19%
80 K-12, parents
female
SLC/NNSA Students,
100% minority
WU and Central State
(mostly AfricanStudents interested in
American), 60%
20 joining SLC/NNSA
female
165
# and
frequency
Duration
of one visit
Total contact
hours
4, monthly
2 hours
65 attendees *
4 visits * 2 hrs
= 520 hrs
(2 visits)
Saturday
and Sunday
2 hours
average
(7hr day)
320 hrs
once
1 hour
7 visits
23 Total
Hrs
20 hrs
860 Total
Contact
Hours
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Winthrop University
http://birdnest.org/slc/
Staff and Roles:
Academic Liaison: Marguerite Doman
Evaluation Assistant: Matthew Shealy
Partners:
Community: South Carolina Personal Pathways to
Success
K-12: Clover High School
K-12: Lancaster High School
K-12: Nation Ford High School
K-12: Rock Hill High School
K-12: York High School
Winthrop University Student Government Assoc.
STARS Alliance Committees
Celebration Committee
SUMMARY
Winthrop students, Thomas Phifer, William
Huffman and Markus Odom, at outreach to
Lancaster High School
Fall 2010/Spring 2011 was the inaugural year for
Winthrop STARS. We started with faculty nominating
prospective members. These members attended the
STARS Celebration in 2010. Our first goal was to build a
solid foundation. In early Fall 2010, we petitioned to
become a recognized student organization; worked on how
best to manage our team; and decided on which projects
we wanted to pursue. Spring 2010 was the semester we
were able to being the outreach events. That is the most
exciting part of STARS. It was a challenging year of
community building and accomplishments.
Successes
While we thoroughly enjoyed our visits to local high schools, it is our campus or peer outreach that
has been most successful. Our tutoring and campus events have been well received. Our campus
events include visiting speakers for computer science students and a cultural event on software
copyrighting and social networking for all university students.
Lessons learned
Starting a new SLC group is hard. It is hard to decide how to manage yourself, what to do and how to
manage your projects. Once the group starts to ‘gel’, it is a lot more fun. One thing we learned is that
we need to do more self-promotion on campus. Besides our events, we need to promote the
organization. This will help with recruiting and sustaining our activities for the following years.
Institutionalization/ Sustainability
To extend the awareness and life of STARS-type practices, we ensure that we identify all our
activities as STARS activities. This promotion helps associate our events with STARS-type practices.
Students presented a STARS poster at the local Carolina Women in Computing (C-WIC) last fall in
Columbia, SC. The SLC students are quite open about explaining their involvement and work with
STARS.
After writing our constitution for a STARS Leadership Corps student organization, we shared it with
other STARS organizations. We hope that a general design or template for a STARS Leadership
Corps student organization can be developed. Our own constitution can benefit from ideas and
suggestions generated by other schools.
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Community Building & Computing Identity
We are working to enhance on campus visibility by presenting both college-wide and campus-wide
events. These include tutoring, inviting speakers for computer science students and a cultural event on
software copyrighting and social networking for all university students. See the section: SLC
Outreach Events and Impact, for a description of these events. This effort, itself, helps improve our
computing identity by making a strong, positive presence on campus. The Computer Science
Brunches, which will be continued next semester, provides role models and community time for all
CS related fields. These are held at the university ‘common time’ which is an hour set aside daily
without schedule classes for organizational gatherings.
DEMONSTRATION PROJECT AND STARS OUTCOMES DETAILS
C-STARS: Culturally Situated Design Tools
Winthrop students studied the Culturally Situated Design Tools at the 2010 STARS Celebration. Our
goal was to use these tools at the local Boys and Girls Club. However, we were not able to complete
this outreach. We plan to revisit this outreach next year.
Pair Programming
Pair programming has been implemented in the first year introductory computer science course for a
number of years. That effort is outside the Demonstration Project of STARS.
STARS LEADERSHIP CORPS
SLC Participation & Organization
Winthrop SLC is managed as a university student organization. We have a president which runs our
weekly meetings and manages communication. We decide on which projects we want to pursue.
Each project is assigned a project leader. This assignment is done by consensus that includes input
from the academic liaison. Each project will then have additional student volunteers to help make the
event(s) happen. Students can be part of more than one project as long as each project has adequate
support. Currently, our reporting mechanisms are through meeting minutes and SLC activities
reports.
STARS Leadership Corps Details
SLC Participation by Ethnicity and Gender
SLC Participants
African American
Asian
Caucasian
Hispanic
Total
SLC Project Types
K-12 Outreach
# SLC
6
Peer/Campus Outreach
5
TOTAL
11
Grad
Females
UG
Females
1
0
3
Grad
Males
UG Males
1
1
4
1
Total
2
1
7
1
11
SLC Details
# SLC stipends & amounts
6 - $500 each
# SLC with no stipends
5
SLC Meeting Frequency
Weekly
SLC Meeting Attendance
5
# Marketing Kits Distributed
3
# Returning & New SLC
9
2010 Celebration participation
# Faculty/Staff
1
# SLC Attendees
5
# SLC Posters
0
# SLC Talks
0
# Faculty Talks
2
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SLC Outreach Events and Impact
Computer Science Brunch:
3/22/2011: This brunch brought Winthrop (and SLC) Alum Lauren
Cairco to campus to talk to students and faculty about her experiences
in the field. She graduated from Winthrop with a degree in Computer
Science and Mathematics. She discussed her time at Winthrop, her
research experiences, and her current work at Clemson as a PhD
student. She talked for about 45 minutes and students and faculty
asked questions for at least 20 minutes.
Months after the event, in a conversation, a (non-SLC) student referred
to something Lauren had presented, demonstrating the relevance and
impact of this outreach.
Lauren Cairco at Computer
Science Brunch event
Tutoring at Winthrop University
The purpose of this activity is to maintain retention in Computer Science courses by offering tutoring
aid to inquiring students. The quality effects a student may gain from seeking tutoring are the
development of interdependent studying techniques, improvement of one's self-confidence in the
college academia, as well as supplement appreciation for computing and technology. Tutors were
available for all introductory Computer Science courses. It was well received. Faculty announced the
availability of tutors to the classes. Feedback from the classes was positive.
High School Outreach
STARS representatives went to local high schools to help promote the study of Computer Science,
maintain retention of computer science students in higher education, and provide advice of how to
make the most of experiencing the pursuit of higher education.
2/25/2011: Lancaster High School
4/1/2011 Clover High School
4/7/2011 Rock Hill High School
4/28/2011 Nation Ford School: Participated with Winthrop at the jobs/career fair.
SLC Reflection: “…This was especially significant for me because I got to see the state of High
School classrooms today and noticed that they were still using all their technology from before I
graduated High School! I felt amazing after doing the outreach and I can’t wait to do it again! It was a
great feeling to be able to plant the seed of thought that was planted in my head so many years ago
that got me here.”
Panel Discussion: “The Social Network”—Ethics, Law and Social Computing
4/28/2011: A panel was prompted by clips of the; movie “The Social Network”. A panel of faculty
discussed topics including ethics, law and social computing as well as fielding questions from the
audience. The panel helped increase the students’ knowledge of these topics and their relevance to
current technology issues.
SLC Outreach Activities and Participation
Primary audience attendee information
Outreach
Activity
CS Brunch –
Invited
Speaker
#
Primary audience
18
Non-SLC College,
undergraduate
HS Outreach:
Lancaster HS
20
High school,
grades 9-12
HS Outreach:
Rock Hill HS
22
High school,
grades 9-12
Ethnicity and gender
60% Female
50% African-American
25% Female
50% African-American
5% Asian
36% Female
27% African – American
# and
frequency
Duration of
one visit
Total contact
hours
Once
One hour
18 hrs
Once
One hour
20 hrs
Once
One hour
22 hrs
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STARS Alliance Narrative Report
HS Outreach:
Clover HS
45
High school,
grades 9-12
15 % Female
10% African-American
10% Hispanic
Once
Three hours
HS Outreach:
Nations Ford
HS
-
High school,
grades 9-12
-
Once
One hour
-
Tutoring
56
Non-SLC College,
undergraduate
60% Female
75% African-American
As
requested
One Hour
56 hrs
Social
Network
Panel
Discussion
75
Non-SLC College,
undergraduate
50% Female
30 % African-American
10% Hispanic
Once
One hour
75 hrs
Totals
9 Total Hrs
236
135 hrs
326 Total Contact
Hrs
Events for STARS Leadership Corps Students
Event Title
Carolinas WIC
Richard Tapia Conference
Supercomputing 2010
Location
Columbia SC
San Francisco, CA
New Orleans, LA
# SLC
2
1
1
Description
Poster, Student Scholarship
Student Scholarship
Student volunteer
Scholarships
Winthrop STARS member Janna Reid has been selected as a finalist of Google’s Anita Borg
Scholarship. Janna is an outstanding student, a positive role model and a great asset to our
organization.
STARS Leadership Corps Institutionalization
At Winthrop University, the STARS Leadership Corps has successfully become a student
organization. This has been a very good fit for our university efforts. As a student organization, we
have access to funds for our events, website support and University recognition.
SLC Recruiting
Currently, our recruiting is primarily word-of-mouth. Also, at our college-wide and campus-wide
events, we talk to prospective students about joining. This is an area of the organization we plan to
work on next year.
Posters (not refereed)
Greene, Carrie and Reid, Janna, “Introduction to STARS”, at Carolina Women in Computing Conference
(CWIC) November 2011.
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