AU FACULTY AWARDED NSF GRANT TO INCREASE MINORITY PARTICIPATION IN COMPUTER-RELATED DISCIPLINES

AUBURN - Three Auburn University Computer Science and Engineering faculty members recently received a National Science Foundation grant of nearly $400,000 to increase the number of African-Americans in tenure-track faculty positions and graduate level programs in computer science and computer engineering.

AU Associate Professor Juan Gilbert led the grant-writing effort, joined by fellow CSE Associate Professor Gerry Dozier and Assistant Professor Cheryl Seals. AU’s grant was one of the first of its kind awarded by the NSF in a new category called Broadening Participation in Computing.

“We received the grant because of our history - we’ve shown what we can do,” said Gilbert. “Also, the NSF has a national need to bring underrepresented people to our discipline.” Gilbert has been a part of winning three other NSF grants.

African Americans represent a small percentage nationwide of those participating in computer science programs. According to the 2003-04 Taulbee Survey - an annual review of Ph.D- granting departments of computer science and computer engineering - there were only 173 African-American computer science doctoral students in all of North America in fall 2004.

Survey statistics for faculty members show an even greater disparity. Of the 5,179 computer science and computer engineering faculty in North America, only 53 are African-American. Also, African-Americans make up less than 1 percent of all associate and full faculty members in the U.S. and Canada.

Statistics show a higher percentage of African-Americans in computer-related programs at AU than for the nation as a whole. About 10 percent of Ph.D students as well as two of the eight African-American associate professors in computer-related programs in North America are at Auburn University. Gilbert thinks the African-American presence at AU played a role in the university’s being awarded the NSF grant.

“When you look at those statistics, and they are rather alarming, you can see why they looked at our grant and awarded it to us,” said Gilbert, who served as Metcalf Chair March 27-29 at Marquette University, where he focused on the importance of diversity in computer, engineering and technological fields. “If anybody knows how to do this, it’s Auburn.”

To accomplish the overall goal of increasing African-American participation in computer science and engineering programs, Gilbert, Dozier and Seals proposed the formation of the African-American Researchers in Computing Sciences (AARCS), a program to broaden the participation of African-Americans as tenure-track faculty and research scientists in computing science.

Gilbert said the group plans to continue to visit historically black colleges and universities and address the “barriers” facing minority students interested in a career in computing sciences.

The idea for the grant, in fact, came about following a prior recruiting visit to Spellman College in Atlanta where Gilbert learned that nearly all of Spellman’s computer science seniors had applied to Auburn’s graduate program. He felt this development was directly related to his team’s visits and a presentation to the students that discounted seven main barriers minority students face when thinking of applying to graduate programs. These barriers include stereotypes of scientists, a lack of African-American computer science role models, and poor advisement during undergraduate years.

“(The students) have misconceptions about these barriers,” Gilbert said, “and they end up not going to graduate school.”

Gilbert’s recruiting visits, which he now calls “targeted presentations,” eventually developed into one of three main aspects of the successful grant proposal. The other two points were the creation of a Future Faculty Mentoring Program and an annual AARCS conference at Auburn University.

In addition to the work of AU’s three faculty members, an outside researcher, Dr. Jerlando Jackson of the University of Wisconsin, will evaluate the program’s overall success.

While the grant has the potential to greatly benefit African-Americans, Gilbert says it will also help the United States’ efforts to stay competitive in the global technology race.

“We are at a disadvantage because the domestic students have not stepped up to the plate as they should have, so we are seeing lower enrollments,” Gilbert said. “What we have to do is tap into traditionally underrepresented groups and bring them into our discipline. It’s very important that we get more domestic students involved in order to remain competitive on a global scale.”

Auburn University is a preeminent land-grant and comprehensive research institution with more than 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff. Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

(Contributed by Will Brinkley.)

# # #

mar06:AU-compenggrant