Inclusion In Computing Via The Early Research Scholars Program At UIC

For a sustainable world, all people who aspire to be engineers should have an equitable opportunity to achieve their engineering education. In the United States, groups of individuals continue to be minoritized in engineering and computing specifically. This practice paper addresses inclusion and diversity efforts in the computing field, within two departments of a college of engineering, to 1) increase the number of minoritized students in computing, 2) introduce research as a career path to undergraduates early on in their education, and 3) nurture a sense of community (within the department and the computing field) for students. These efforts are being furthered through the Early Research Scholars Program, which is a program to engage students with research within their first 3-4 semesters in their undergraduate careers. In this paper, we will review aspects of this program that make it inclusive and harness diversity, share preliminary results from the last two years on community building within the program, and provide implications for other institutions to implement inclusive and community-building practices in their curricula or programming