The S-STEM Florida IT Pathways to Success (Flit-Path) project provided approximately 500 scholarships totaling over $3,000,000, and curricular and co-curricular support to academically talented students with financial need in the IT related disciplines of Computer Science (CS), Information Technology (IT), and Computer Engineering (CpE) at three large public R1 universities in Florida: Florida International University (FIU), University of Central Florida (UCF), and University of South Florida (USF). Project activities included tutoring for foundation courses; intrusive academic advising; faculty, industry, and peer mentoring achieved through scholar participation in internship, research, and/or entrepreneurship Pathway Experiences provided through the Flit-Path program; academic and career pathway support; and shared technical elective courses delivered online.

The project recruited two types of diverse cohorts of students over six years. Cohort A students, recruited in the first three years of the grant represented first time and first year college students who were to be supported for four years. Cohort B students who were recruited in all six years were college seniors, who had the potential and interest in graduating within one year's time. Selection criteria for the scholarships were US citizen or permanent residents, academically strong, and documented unmet financial need. Roughly 2/3 of the selected students were from groups underrepresented in computing (including women, Black/African American, and Hispanic/Latinx). Flit-Path students graduated at a significantly higher rate than similarly situated students in these disciplines.

The knowledge generation component began with a mixed methods study that began with a quantitative survey study administered to students in CS, IT, and CpE (including Flit-Path students in both Cohort A and Cohort B) at FIU, UCF, and USF. Students were surveyed in Fall 2017, Fall 2018, and Fall 2020. The 2017 survey consisted of 22 questions that included demographics, students' intention to pursue a CS career, their intentions to persist to a bachelor's degree in computing, as well as items measuring constructs that are central to constructing computing identities within Communities of Practice (CoP) including computing competency beliefs (similar to computing self-efficacy, but less task specific), interest, recognition, and sense of belonging. The 2018 survey included the aforementioned questions as well as questions on their experiences in the CS, IT, and CpE programs, particularly related to CoP (e.g., mentoring, coursework, advising, resources, and professional development). In comparing the matched groups, using the Fall 2017 survey data, the Flit-Path students were significantly higher on their computing sense of belonging, recognition, and performance/competence beliefs. There was also a near significant difference on computing interest in favor of Flit-Path students. These results indicate that students who experienced the Flit-Path program are higher on CoP outcomes than their matched counterparts with similar demographics, background, and academic achievement, which is a clear indicator of the cumulative positive effect of the Flit-Path program on students to improve both retention and graduation statistics. This work will be submitted to the Association of Computing Machinery Transactions on Computing Education (ACM TOCE).

More specific focus on particular program experiences that influence the prediction of computing identity, was recently completed and resulted in a paper that was published in ACM TOCE. The results showed that several types of experiences positively predict a student's computing identity, such as mentoring others, having a job, or having friends in computing. Moreover, certain experiences had a different effect on computing identity for female and Hispanic/Latinx students and were experienced at significantly different rates by female, Black/African American, and Hispanic/Latinx students. The findings highlight experiential ways in which computing programs can foster computing identity development, particularly for underrepresented and marginalized groups in computing to achieve higher graduation rates.

Furthermore, a peer-reviewed conference paper was presented at the Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference which was focused on understanding the experiences that contribute to the participation of underrepresented groups in computing. Another two peer-reviewed conference papers were presented at the American Association of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference on experiences related to technical interviews and experiences that led to interest in pursuing graduate programs in computing. One additional conference paper was presented at the Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) Conference which focused on the impact that technical interviews have on social/cultural aspects in computing as well as students' computing identity with the continued focus being on achieving higher graduation rates.

Select project activities have been sustained in all or some of the participating institutions, such as: shared online technical electives (all), intrusive academic advising (all), completion scholarships (FIU), creation and teaching of an entrepreneurship course (UCF), activities that will have continued impact on CS, IT, CpE majors, and other majors.

Last Modified: 01/25/2023
Modified by: Kenneth J Christensen