Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC)

The Broadening Participation in Computing program (BPC) aims to significantly increase the number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents receiving post-secondary degrees in the computing disciplines, and to encourage participation of other underrepresented groups in the discipline. These groups may include women, persons with disabilities, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. With this solicitation, the BPC program seeks to engage the computing community to develop and implement innovative methods, frameworks, and strategies to improve recruitment and retention of these students through undergraduate and graduate degrees. Projects that target stages of the academic pipeline through faculty ranks are encouraged. All BPC projects must have the potential for widespread, national impact. That is, they should either develop an effective practice that could be widely deployed, or they should deploy existing effective practices to reach larger audiences.

The BPC program will support three categories of awards: Alliances, Demonstration Projects, and Supplements.

Alliances are broad coalitions of academic institutions of higher learning, K-12 schools, government, industry, professional societies, and other not-for-profit organizations that design and carry out comprehensive programs addressing underrepresentation in the computing disciplines. They have a large regional or national scope. Alliances operate across multiple stages of the academic pipeline and address one or several intended groups that are underrepresented. Collectively, Alliances serve as a national resource for achieving the transformation of computing education.

Existing Alliances with documented evidence of national impact on broadening participation in computing may apply for additional funding. An Alliance Extension increases the duration of the Alliance award as well as its scope, introducing additional student groups to be reached, partners, and/or projects with the intended purpose of significant impact to the populations served.

Demonstration Projects (DPs) are more focused than Alliance projects. Typical DPs pilot innovative programs that, once fully developed, could be incorporated into the activities of an existing or new Alliance, or otherwise scaled up for widespread impact. Examples include projects proposed by a single institution or those that focus on a single underrepresented community, a single point in the academic pathway, or a single impediment to full participation in computing. Demonstration projects should contribute knowledge to our understanding of effective teaching and learning of computing for students from groups underrepresented in computing. 

Both Alliances and Demonstration Projects have significant evaluation efforts with both formative and summative components. Competitive projects will have significant impact both in the quality of opportunities afforded to participants and in the number of participants potentially served. 

Supplements  to existing CISE research awards are intended to engage more members of the computing research community in significant BPC efforts as part of a project’s BPC plan.