About WITS

Cornell University has been given a grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to lead a Demonstration Project for NSF's Broadening Participation in Computing program (BPC). The project, titled Worlds for Information Technology and Science (WITS), explores an innovative approach to attracting women and underrepresented minorities to computing fields. The project is led by Dr. David Gries, associate dean for undergraduate programs in Engineering and professor of Computer Science, and Margaret Corbit, director of SciCentr, a Cornell University outreach program, with evaluation by Dr. Jennifer Wofford, assistant dean of educational programs, Computing and Information Science . Gries and Corbit are leaders in the development of undergraduate education in computer science and the use of new media for outreach education, respectively.

"Computing has broadened to encompass almost all fields," says Gries. "This grant will help us to not only attract Cornell students into computing but will also serve to build awareness of and excitement for computing in secondary schools. At the same time, we ourselves will be learning about what does and does not work in teaching computing at these levels."

WITS will broaden the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing through the use of service learning to encourage them to enter computing fields. Service learning has been shown to appeal to higher percentages of women and minorities by providing contextualized learning and community building that enhances self confidence. The project includes development of a new course at the undergraduate level. This curriculum, developed initially by Corbit and Wofford, will be piloted at Boston College as part of Cornell's partnership with the MediaGrid's Immersive Education (IED) initiative

The WITS project also supports the creation of CYFair, an associated service-outreach program in which undergraduates serve as mentors to middle school students. CYFair builds on the success of CTC's SciCentr/SciFair outreach program, which uses the medium of online virtual worlds to attract and retain middle school students in education. CYFair focuses on computing and information science and building foundation computing skills at the middle school level.

"As was underscored by participants and presenters at the Kickoff Meeting for the BPC program in Atlanta, each institution of higher education is unique; programs developed at or for one institution will not always transfer seamlessly to other sites," says Corbit. "With this in mind, we have recruited representatives from a range of service-learning communities to participate in content development to ensure that our model will be valuable and useful in a variety of settings."

Each of the partner sites takes a different approach at implementing CYFair and supporting a service learning experience for the participating undergraduate students. Cornell continues to engage middle school teams in CYFair through the model of paid mentorships. Boston College will integrate mentorship into the course. To ensure scalability and adaptability of the program model, the approach is being adapted and tested at three geographically dispersed institutions: Pennsylvania State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. These trial sites have been engaged from the beginning in program development, and they projects at their home institutions that are adapted to appropriate modes of learning through service.

Research associated with the WITS project focuses on project evaluation led by Wofford. "Although WITS focuses on underrepresented groups, this project holds the promise of improving research, education, and outreach for all students in computing," says Wofford.