Collaborative Research: Workshop - BP in STEM, Computer Science and Engineering through improved Financial Literacy

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This collaborative research award supports our nation's capacity to build computer science, engineering and related scientific/mathematical workforce excellence through contribution of a convergent, interdisciplinary, and knowledgeable team that possesses the requisite financial literacy knowledge base. This workshop will convene a consortium of academia, industry, and government to seek understanding on how student financial literacy and related topics impact broadening participation in the computer and information sciences and engineering future workforce. This activity will result in understanding motivations of students in considering financial options such as excessive student loan debt through the project's graduate financial options framework. The input from this consortium will allow additional understanding on underrepresented populations which are shown to have excessive debt in comparison to their counterparts and how it impacts their decisions to join and participate in the U.S. STEM workforce. While a few workshops have been held to discuss broadening participation of underrepresented populations in computer and information sciences and engineering, there has not yet been a dedicated workshop to address the gaps in entering the workforce as caused by lack of financial literacy. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity are the models investigated to support the graduate financial options framework. The workshop sessions will serve to inform and provide understanding on how future career choices of students from underrepresented populations in computer science and engineering and related convergent data science fields are negatively impacted by preconditions such as excessive student loan debt. The broader impact of this workshop of supporting research that impacts recruitment, retention, and entry into the workforce of underrepresented students is significant. We expect workshop involvement of underrepresented minority student populations from Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions at the associate, bachelor, masters and doctoral degree levels in computer science and related convergent fields such as computational neuroscience, operations research, and data science to promote the breadth of computer and information sciences and engineering field. By addressing this important topic through this research, this project will support and provide understanding on how to increase America's role for innovation, excellence, and advancement in the contributions of underrepresented minority students to the US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.