Team profile by A. Nicki Washington, Shaundra B. Daily, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Crystal E. Peoples, Fatima Fairfax, Alex Rogers, Jabari Kwesi, Elyse McFalls and Helen Xiao

Black, Native American, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and Latinx undergraduates are underrepresented in computing fields (i.e., computer science (CS), engineering and information systems). While national conversations around race and (anti-)racism have led departments to put more of an emphasis on degree entry and completion among people from ethno-racial groups that are historically underrepresented in computing, research has not uncovered how computing undergraduates perceive and make sense of race and racial (under)representation in their majors and departments. Thus, our key research questions were:

• How do CS undergraduate students perceive race in university computing departments?
• What factors influence CS undergraduate students’ understanding of and experiences with race in the context of computing departments?

Creating a Survey and an Interview Guide for Distribution

The entire project team constructed a quantitative instrument iteratively using pre-existing survey items and questions based on the literature from similar STEM disciplines. After we had a preliminary draft, we conducted a pre-test of the survey to undergraduate CS students at three diverse universities. We further edited the survey tool based on feedback from the pre-test until we arrived at the version that was distributed across multiple computing listservs.

The interview guide was developed alongside the survey instrument. We emphasized creating questions that would elicit transparent and genuine responses that would expand on the findings from the survey instrument. The final interview guide contained direct, open-ended questions about race, racism, representation and perceptions of race. Since the team worked with the Friday Institute of North Carolina State University to administer the qualitative instrument, we also developed extensive instruction and guidance on how to conduct the interviews.

Together, we wrote a paper describing our methods and instrument development that was accepted for publication by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) this summer!

Collecting and Analyzing Data From Over 500 Undergraduates in Computing

We also began analysis of the quantitative data from the survey, which resulted in 552 computing undergraduates from a wide variety of demographic backgrounds. Our initial results demonstrated that country of origin and gender significantly shape students’ perceptions of race. We also found that dominant groups (whites and Asians) perceive themselves as having less advantage in computing compared to other groups’ perceptions of them. Finally, in general, we found that race is less salient for white students. We presented these initial findings at the 2023 Fortin Foundation Bass Connections Showcase, where our group took second place out of the 41 posters presented that day! 

What’s Next?

As we transition into the summer, one graduate student will be transcribing the interviews, while a smaller team will be presenting the first published paper to come from this work at the ASEE national conference. 

The team will continue next year with two new students and four students returning, and we will delve deeper into the quantitative data and begin analysis of the interview data. 

Understanding Perceptions of Race Among Computer Science Undergraduates

Poster by Jabari Kwesi, Elyse McFalls, Helen Xiao, Fatima Fairfax, Alex Rogers, A. Nicki Washington, Crystal Peoples, Shaundra B. Daily and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva