BPC-A: Statewide Vertical Alliance to Broaden Participation through Innovative, Inviting, and Relevant Computing Education

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Georgia Institute of Technology proposes to extend its existing alliance of educational organizations - including the Girl Scout Council of Northwestern Georgia, the YWCA, Georgia Department of Education, and the University System of Georgia - to create a pipeline of innovative, inviting, and relevant computing education for students across the state of Georgia. The effort will teach contextualized computing which focuses on use of the computer as a tool in solving, concrete real domain, human problems. This approach has been particularly successful in attracting and retaining women, and there is evidence that it will also be successful in minority populations. The PIs will extend their current programs for precollege and college students, and they provide training and curricular materials for teachers and faculty. Activities supported under this proposal include Girl Scout summer camps and YMCA after school programs, a Cool Computing on-line community to mentor girls at the K-12 and college level, training for developers of high school camps, undergraduate mentoring of high school students, and residential workshops for college faculty. While many of these efforts already exist on a small scale or have been successfully piloted, this award will make it possible to run and evaluate them at the state-wide level. The aim is to increase the flow of students entering undergraduate and graduate computing programs.