Welcome to the Workshop on Departmental Plans for BPC

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is committed to broadening participation in computing (BPC). CISE strongly encourages meaningful actions that address the longstanding under representation of various populations — including women, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Native Pacific Islanders, and persons with disabilities — in the computing field. Learn more about the CISE BPC effort.

Since 2017, the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) has been piloting efforts for broadening participation in computing (BPC). The directorate has started asking CISE Principal Investigators to include meaningful BPC plans in proposals submitted to a subset of CISE’s research programs. To support departments in preparing for this new effort, the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invites administrators and faculty members from computing institutions to apply to participate in a workshop focused on Departmental Plans for Broadening Participation in Computing. 

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS- NEW WORKSHOPS ANNOUNCED!

To support departments developing a Departmental BPC Plan, the Computing Research Association (CRA) will host a series of workshops funded by NSF. The first two workshops in this series will be held virtually on July 13-14, 2020 and August 6-7, 2020.

These two workshops will present the same content on BPC plans, and include hands-on activities and real-time feedback for writing these plans. At the end of the workshop, the participants will have their own draft Departmental BPC Plan. Following the workshops, the participants will also have the opportunity to receive additional feedback as they continue to refine their BPC plans.

Please visit the workshop website for more information. The deadline to apply for the July workshop is July 8th, 2020. Click here to apply for the July workshop.

ELIGIBILITY

The NSF-BPC Departmental Plan Workshops are free and open to computing department faculty and administrators who will be developing Departmental Plans for their department. Applicants do not need to have prior experience developing departmental BPC plans.

PAST WORKSHOPS

The inaugural NSF sponsored workshop, hosted by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign took place from November 13-15, 2019 in the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science. Participants spent 1.5 days learning from BPC experts and working in break-out groups to develop a departmental plan for their own unit. The workshop culminated leadership teams developing a departmental plan that they took back to their unit for their faculty to use in support of their NSF CISE proposals. 

Click here to learn more about this inaugural workshop, including links to presentation slides.

Workshop Organizing Committee