Building a Montana Computing Consortium

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at institutions of higher education across Montana. Over its one-year duration, this project will: build collaboration and infrastructure among college and university computing faculty and other stakeholders in Montana; identify the needs and gather data on the underrepresentation of computer science identity, especially for women and American Indian students; and support funding 20 students from across Montana for two Visit Days, where they will learn about graduate degrees in computing in Montana.

The data gathered will be useful for setting up standards for scholarships in a later stage. Intellectually, the research results identify reasons preventing low-income, women, and American Indian students from pursuing computing degrees and careers. Broadly, this project will initiate a systematic process to increase computing populations in Montana.

The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving students with demonstrated financial need. As a planning project for a larger S-STEM Track 3 future project (whose goal is to increase computer science students at all levels in Montana), the goals of this project are to advance understanding of the reasons preventing Montanan students, especially minorities, from choosing computing as careers, and certainly, and to involve student participation to help build their career.

New measures, like persistence intentions (i.e., how likely a student is to continue his/her career in computing) will be used to collect data which will help setting up standards on scholarships for the corresponding students in a later stage. The project will also strengthen collaboration for computing personnel in Montana and will attract student participation by supporting 20 out-of-town undergraduate students pursuing graduate degrees on two Visit Days. In addition to all of these, one of the outcomes of this project is a larger Track-3 proposal.

This project is funded by NSF’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers, and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students.

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.