BPR: Identifying Factors that Impact Success and Persistence in Computer Science Education

About This Grant

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) through the Research on Broadening Participation in STEM funding opportunity provides support for projects that create and advance theory driven models and innovations addressing efforts to promote student success and retention in STEM at HBCUs. This project contributes to increasing national competitiveness and serves the national interest by identifying and scaling effective institutional and departmental practices that promote undergraduate computing majors' academic success and career readiness. HBCUs are essential in promoting the development of the nation's workforce. HBCUs have a long-standing tradition of producing graduates in STEM fields. This project establishes a collaborative network of HBCU computing departments and investigates how institutional and department-level factors influence student persistence and aspirations in computing. Findings contribute to a best practices catalog that informs institutional strategies to enhance computing education. The project also generates critical insights into why some students leave the computing pipeline, providing evidence to strengthen retention efforts and improve the effectiveness of undergraduate STEM education. The study employs a mixed-methods research design guided by theoretical frameworks, such as Astin's Input-Environment-Outcome (IEO) model. Data collection partners in the study are Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morgan State University, and Winston-Salem State University. The data collection plan includes surveys, departmental document review, and phenomenological semi-structured interviews with undergraduate computing majors, faculty, administrators, and students who withdrew from computing majors. Data are analyzed using a hybrid of deductive and inductive thematic coding to develop institutional models linking student background (input), learning environment (environment), and outcomes (e.g., graduation and career goals). This project goes beyond identifying factors related to success and persistence within computing majors. It is designed to expand understanding of how these factors relate to students' persistence and career aspirations in computing disciplines, which are experiencing exponential growth and require a skilled workforce. The project addresses research questions that investigate key institutional and department-level practices that facilitate the success of computing majors; the ways that these practices promote academic success and influence students' career aspirations within the field of computing; and the undergraduate experiences that contribute to students leaving computing majors at HBCUs. This research project is establishing a collaborative HBCU computing network and producing scalable best practices for computing departments. 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.