Abstract
This chapter discusses the creation of organizations focused on opening computing careers to underrepresented minorities. The Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA), formed in 1975, is an organization of individual members with a particular interest in advancing the careers of African-American IT workers, but also concerned with engaging and preparing African-American children for these careers. The Association of Computer and Information Science at Minority Institutions (ADMI) was founded in 1989 to help computing departments at minority institutions to deal with the various issues faced by academic administrators trying to offer an effective educational program. The Coalition to Diversify Computing (CDC) was formed in 1996 primarily to prepare undergraduate and graduate students in computer science for research careers in universities or industry. The chapter closes with a discussion of the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology (CMD-IT), formed in 2007, which serves a similar role for underrepresented minorities and people with disabilities as NCWIT does for women.
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Notes
- 1.
The organization expanded its name to BDPA—Information Technology Thought Leaders in 1996 in hopes of becoming better known.
This section is based on the organization’s website (bdpa.org); BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (2006), Norton (2013), Anon. (2009, 2010, 2012), Gibson (1997), Summers (2013), Warfield (1991), Hicks (2011), Fairley (1995), Bates (1993), Davis (1997), Watson (2014), Berkley (1999), Muhammad (1996, 1998), Sherman (2011), Larson (2011a, b), Roach (2006), Burgess (2004), Carter (2014), Haskell (2010), Tennant (2009), and Pace (2014).
- 2.
Wimberly had an office on the same floor as Pace, and they discussed the needs for an organization like BDPA. Pace and Wimberly shared the cost of a hotel meeting room to convene a group of African American IT professionals to discuss the need for an organization like BDPA. Wimberly died soon thereafter, even before the BDPA bylaws were written. Wimberly met few of the early volunteers working to build BDPA, but he did have an influence on Pace, who has been a driving force in BDPA throughout its entire history (BETF 2014).
- 3.
Almost half of the leadership positions at both the national and local level have been held by women since the founding of the organization, and this pattern continues today (Anon. 2012).
- 4.
Larson (2011b) describes the poster child of BDPA’s student and professional activities: Stephanie Brown , who had participated in one of the organization’s Saturday programming classes in Washington, DC when she was in ninth grade; was inspired at age 14 by the BDPA annual conference; completed internships with Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Deloitte by age 21; graduated with a major in management science and engineering from Stanford; was recruited out of college by Microsoft without applying; and quickly moved up the management ranks.
- 5.
- 6.
On computer literacy camp for younger students, see Warfield (1991).
- 7.
- 8.
For a list of the annual conferences and their themes, see http://www.bdpa.org/?page=PastBDPAConferences.
- 9.
- 10.
Links to the ADMI symposia flyers, which include some history of the past year, from 2002 through 2014 are available at ADMI (2014).
- 11.
The highlight of the Symposium for the students is the banquet, where the awards are presented to students on the basis of their research talks. However, the tutorials or skill-building exercises are also important. The symposium is of particular importance to the faculty, as Willis (2015) explained: “Kind of like a birds of a feather [sessions] where you get together, you talk. You could discuss your problems. You can discuss different types of solutions and of course the research that’s presented. You learn some other things. Of course, is the ability to join forces as far as maybe some grantsmanship or research projects concerned, collaboration.”
- 12.
Under the direction of Linda Hayden at Elizabeth City State University, students are given the opportunity to participate in a Research Experiences for Undergraduates associated with NSF’s CReSIS program. The students who participate at Elizabeth City are typically younger students who have no previous research experience. Based on what they learn there, these students are able the following year to engage in a more advanced research experience at a remote site such as the University of Kansas or Indiana University. Many of the students involved with this program pursue masters programs in computing or computational science, and this engagement has also led several students to undertake doctoral study ( Lawrence 2014).
- 13.
Hampton, Spelman, University of the District of Columbia , Florida A&M, Winston Salem State University, and Elizabeth City State University students regularly attended. Other schools, such as Fisk or Xavier in St. Louis, would send students when there was external funding available (Willis 2015).
- 14.
This material about the Coalition to Diversify Computing is based primarily on the twice-a-year reports that CDC makes to the Computing Research Association board of directors (CRA 2000 – 2013) and CDC (n.d.). This section also draws on interviews that the author conducted with Andrew Bernat (2015), Valerie Taylor (2015), Elaine Weyuker (2014), and John White (2015).
- 15.
On why American Indians were not one of the underrepresented groups discussed at the meeting, the final report states: “…because the number of Native Americans enrolled in CS programs is so small, their academic experience is significantly different from that of other minorities. We acceded to the suggestion that we focus the workshop on issues relating only to African Americans and Hispanics.” (York et al. 1995)
- 16.
York et al. (1995) provides demographics of the workshop participants: 26 academic (mostly professors, but 13 had also been deans or department chairs), 4 government, and only 2 industrial. Of these, only 5 were women, 20 were African American, 7 were Hispanic, 7 were White, and 1 was Middle Eastern. The group came from 9 minority institutions and 8 majority institutions.
- 17.
CDC had particular difficulty in its communications with IEEE Computer Society (Taylor 2015).
- 18.
CDC had some additional early activities. These included a Traveling Graduate School Workshop in which graduate students and faculty members from research universities would visit HBCUs and other Minority-Serving Institutions “to provide students with an honest picture of the value and the downsides of enrolling in Master’s and Ph.D. programs. Presentations by visiting graduate students and faculty detail what graduate school is like, how to apply, how to get financial aid, and the benefits of attending. Further, the workshop plays a role in connecting students with possible institutions for further study.” Another early example was a Pre-Conference Minority Networking Event before a Usenix conference so that the students would not feel so isolated and so that they would learn how to get the most out of a conference. CDC also organized a best practices workshop for recruiting and retaining minority graduate students ( Baylor and Redelfs 2000).
- 19.
“[ Valerie Taylor a]nd I were at Grace Hopper several times over the years, and at one of the meetings she invited me to participate in this organizational meeting for Tapia. At that point I don’t think it was named, they just wanted to have something to reach minorities in computing … in the same way that Grace Hopper was reaching women; and there was a meeting in Atlanta and we got it organized and actually it became something that was basically run by the CDC…” ( Lawrence 2014)
- 20.
CRA was too small an organization to take the financial risk of being an official sponsor for the Tapia Conference, e.g. signing the hotel contract for the meeting, but it did provide $10,000 for travel scholarships. Moreover, Jim Foley, then the CRA board chair and acting dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, donated some scholarship funding from his college – and several other CRA board members did the same from their departments. ACM took on the entire financial risk for the first Tapia conference; for some of the later meetings, the IEEE Computer Society shared this risk. But ACM remained the most active partner of the three. In recent year, IEEE Computer Society has dropped its support for CDC (Taylor 2015).
- 21.
While there has been some concern that the Tapia Conference is getting too large and impersonal, Juan Gilbert is all in favor of the growth: “They definitely increased the size. I think it’s a good thing. Now, more people are aware. I think that’s very important. More and more students are coming – all types of students from all over the country. It has that appeal. The only problem we’ve had is that students lose attention. We need to make sure that they’re aware that, “Okay, we have a keynote. You should go to the keynote, these are very high-profile people.” Perhaps they don’t know them yet. That doesn’t mean they won’t be interested. … It’s been very good. I think connecting entering students [to one another]” ( Gilbert 2015).
- 22.
- 23.
For a history of the NSF Broadening Participation in Computing program, see Aspray (2016).
- 24.
The name of CMD-IT (pronounced like “command it”) was thought up by Ann Gates during one of the planning calls. CMD was taken from the command line in a programming language, and IT referred of course to information technology. However, the acronym also stands for the organization’s full name, Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in Information Technology.
- 25.
CMD-IT also runs the Grace Hopper Underrepresented Women in Computing Committee, which takes responsibility for content related to underrepresented minorities and people with disabilities at the Grace Hopper conferences.
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Aspray, W. (2016). Organizations That Help Underrepresented Minorities to Build Computing Careers. In: Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Computing. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24811-0_9
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