Opening Computing Careers to Underrepresented Groups

Abstract

This chapter describes the history of NSF programs to broaden participation in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines generally and in the computing discipline specifically. The reauthorization of the NSF in 1980 led to the creation of the Commission on Equal Opportunity in Science and Technology. Between 1980 and 1992, numerous small programs were established at NSF to address issues of broadening participation; but they did not lead to the changes in numbers of participants that the Commission had hoped for. Two new STEM programs, the Program on Women and Girls and the ADVANCE program, provided help to the computing directorate when it created its own broadening participation programs. The IT Workforce program built a community of scholars interested in this topic. The Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances became NSF's most successful program with this purpose in the higher education domain. A successor program, Computing Education in the Twenty-First Century, expanded ties to the education directorate and initiated a successful precollege program.