Education and Workforce Program

The mission of the CISE Education and Workforce (EWF) programs is to transform computing education at all levels and on a national scale to meet the challenges and opportunities of a world where computing is increasingly essential to all sectors of society. We seek to overturn the longstanding underrepresentation in computing, achieving proportional representation of women, persons with disabilities, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders. Ultimately, EWF envisions the development of a diverse workforce well prepared for careers in computing-related and computationally intensive fields.

To accomplish this mission, CISE EWF programs aim to:

• Promote leadership and efforts to engage the computing community in infusing computational thinking into education at all levels and across disciplinary boundaries.
• Develop and support sustainable communities of researchers involved in innovative and transformative approaches to computing education.
• Promote and enable excellence in computing education through the integration of research and education.

EWF programs are described below.

Programs directly supported by EWF:

Computer Science for All Research and Research Practitioner Partnership (CSforAll:RPP)

NSF's CSforAll program is part of a national effort to provide all U.S. students with the opportunity to participate in computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) education in their schools at the K-12 levels.

Broadening Participation in Computing(BPC) program

The BPC program aims to significantly increase the participation of people from groups underrepresented in the computing discipline. The program supports Alliances, Demonstration Projects, and Supplements to existing awards.

CISE Broadening Participation in Computing Initiative

Since July of 2017, CISE has been running an initiative to broaden participation in computing, seeking to include BPC efforts as an accepted and expected part of all CISE research award portfolios. The initiative calls on certain classes of CISE research projects to have an approved BPC plan by the time of award.

Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Computing in Undergraduate Education (IUSE: CUE)

The IUSE: CUE program aims to better prepare a wider, more diverse range of students to collaboratively use computation across a range of contexts and challenging problems. The program supports efforts to re-envision how to teach computing effectively to a broad group of students, in a scalable manner, with an emphasis on broadening participation of groups who are underrepresented and underserved by traditional computing courses and careers.

Computer and Information Science and Engineering Minority-Serving Institutions Research Expansion Program (CISE-MSI)

The CISE-MSI program supports capacity building for research in CISE at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs).

Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US

CSGrad4US aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in the CISE fields. CSGrad4US provides an opportunity for bachelor’s degree holders who may be working in industry or other sectors to return to academia and pursue research-based doctoral degrees.

Other programs supported by EWF

• Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites
• Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Sites
• Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES)
• ADVANCE: Organizational Change for Gender Equity in STEM Academic Professions (ADVANCE)
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Excellence in Research (HBCU-EiR)
• National Science Foundation Research Traineeship Program (NRT)