| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 30, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | November 24, 2021 |
| Award Number: | 1821521 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Paul Tymann
ptymann@nsf.gov (703)292-2832 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2018 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $740,179.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $740,179.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
9500 GILMAN DR LA JOLLA CA US 92093-0021 (858)534-4896 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
CA US 92093-0934 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | IUSE |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Enrollment in computer science (CS) programs across the nation is higher than ever, yet two critical problems persist. First, despite these high enrollments, relatively few U.S. students are continuing on to graduate school. Maintaining and improving the health of the domestic Ph.D. pipeline is a concern of universities, companies, and government agencies. Second, the population of students pursuing CS degrees is not representative of the diversity of people in the U.S., with women and other groups persistently underrepresented. The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) aims to address issues of increasing the Ph.D. pipeline and broadening participation in computer science fields. ERSP is an academic-year, team-based research apprenticeship program that places special emphasis on mentoring women and underrepresented groups in the second year of the CS major. ERSP's mentoring framework includes the research mentor and the ERSP central mentoring team, providing multifaceted support for each student. In addition, it is structured to engage a large number of early CS students in a productive, positive CS research experience without imposing undue work on individual research advisors. By engaging students in early research, ERSP aims to increase their retention at the undergraduate level and recruitment into graduate programs. The project has been running successfully at University of California San Diego for four years. This project will expand ERSP to other universities, including Stanford University, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The project will also study the outcomes of ERSP on the student and faculty participants at all institutions.
This project has two parts: expansion of ERSP and evaluation of the impact of ERSP on participants. Initially, ERSP will be implemented at three research-intensive schools with a range of undergraduate admission criteria. Each implementation will be tailored to the specific context of the institution, providing a range of implementation structures as models for how ERSP might be successfully implemented. After this initial expansion phase, the project plans to partner with two additional schools to explore how ERSP could be implemented at less research-intensive universities (e.g., masters institutions). The second part of this project is research on the long-term impact of ERSP on student participants. Specifically, the project seeks to assess whether ERSP promotes the following among participants: a sense of connection with the computing community, short-term and long-term engagement in research, CS knowledge, and persistence in computing. Evaluators at the Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline will use their national survey infrastructure to collect experiential data from ERSP students vs. non-ERSP students, as the students progress through college and after they leave college. These evaluators will also conduct interviews with ERSP program leaders, faculty mentors, and students, and control faculty and students who are not participating in ERSP. These interviews will supplement the survey data, and help the ERSP team better understand ERSP impact, as well as identify new challenges and opportunities for program improvement.
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.
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) is a team-based research apprentice experience for early computer science and engineering undergraduate students. Students in ERSP work in teams of four, and each team is matched with an active research project and technical mentor. In addition, teams receive supplemental support through an introduction to research methods course, and a central mentor who supports teams with their communication, organization, goal setting and task planning, and basic research skills. Throughout the program, students learn about research in computer science and then propose and carry out an independent research project over the course of an academic year. ERSP's collaborative and supportive structure, as well as its inclusive selection criteria, was designed to engage students from groups underrepresented in computer science including women and gender marginalized students, and Black, Latino/a/e and Native American students.
ERSP began in 2014 at UC San Diego. The goal of this project was to expand ERSP to other universities across the United States and to study its long-term impact on students. The project produced the following outcomes:
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Broad implementation of ERSP across a diverse range of institutions. ERSP was launched at the following universities in the following years: UC Santa Barbara (2018), Stanford (2019), University of Illinois-Chicago (2019), UMass Amherst (2021), North Carolina State University (2021), Texas Southern University (TSU) (2022), Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) (2022). UC San Diego also launched a version of ERSP across the Engineering school called the Guided Engineering Apprenticeship in Research (GEAR).
Variations on the ERSP model were developed for different contexts. For example, TSU and Stanford used a single-semester, in-course version of the program where students complete their research training and project in one semester. TSU and SCSU focused on students later in their academic careers to better meet the needs of their programs. -
Comprehensive materials for running the program. The team developed a complete guide and materials for teaching the undergraduate research methods course and launching and running the ERSP program. These materials can be found here: https://ersp.ucsd.edu/resources/startup-course-materials
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National expansion via the Computing Research Association (CRA) UR2PhD program. ERSP was used as the basis for the undergraduate research pillar in the CRA's new UR2PhD program, which serves hundreds of undergraduates at dozens of schools throughout North America.
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National visibility and outreach were achieved through the National ERSP Conference (started in 2022), through workshops given virtually in 2024, and through the ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science (SIGCSE) in 2022 & 2023.
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ERSP brought a large and diverse set of students into research. During the period of this grant, 780 students participated in ERSP. 50% of these students identified as women or non-binary, and 24% identified as belonging to a racial group that is underrepresented in computing.
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ERSP students had higher retention in the major. A longitudinal study of outcomes at UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara revealed that 98% of ERSP students were retained in their undergraduate CS major, compared to 90% of a matched control group. This result was particularly strong for women and non-binary participants (97% of women/non-binary participants in ERSP were retained in the major, vs 83% in the control group).
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A better understanding of how the program's group-based and dual mentoring structure supports students. Our research and experience found that the group-based structure of the program both allowed the program to scale, and provided a strong community for participants. We also found that the two mentors in the program provided complementary support, with the technical mentor providing project-specific support and high-level context for the work, and the central mentor providing guidance on next steps and helping students communicate with their technical mentor. This dual-mentoring structure provided an all-around positive mentoring experience for the students in the program.
ERSP has proven to be a successful way to scale undergraduate research while providing many of the same benefits (e.g. increased retention) as more traditional one-on-one research experiences. Our work has provided a model and resources that can continue to be adopted widely to help diversity computing programs at the undergraduate level, and prepare a more diverse student body for graduate study.
Last Modified: 01/27/2025
Modified by: Christine J Alvarado
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