Dartmouth Receives Diagnostic Grant from the Center for Inclusive Computing

Dartmouth's Department of Computer Science recently received a Diagnostic Grant from the Center for Inclusive Computing at Northeastern University to take a deeper look at persistence and retention data. The grant is part of an ongoing process to better understand how women are faring in undergraduate computing and to determine various methods by which the College can better support students.

Professor David Kotz, PI for SPLICE – the $10 million, five-year project recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) – is leading the Diagnostic Grant. Quantitative data of student persistence and retention as well as qualitative data is being collected to provide deeper insights. The Department seeks to understand not just what is happening with regards to student retention, but why it is happening. The Department plans to establish an ongoing data-collection effort to effectively and continuously track progress on these statistics, and identify specific courses of action.

In recent years, about a third of Dartmouth CS majors were female-identifying, including modified majors with CS as the primary or secondary part. In the 2020 academic year, 41% of undergraduate CS degree recipients were female-identifying. Dartmouth was voted the second top-ranked US university for computer science for women in 2017. Nonetheless, we look forward to gathering concrete data on where we need to put more attention and effort to further increase our diversity and inclusivity.

To learn more about the grant and the Center for Inclusive Computing, check out the website here.