BPC Scholars

Are you a student interested in learning how to conduct research? 

Are you a faculty member looking to build capacity at your institution for evaluating your computing pipeline efforts? 

Apply to the STARS Broadening Participation in Computing Research Scholars program!

The STARS BPC Research program (BPCR) serves a national resource, with an online STARS BPC Research Toolkit of learning materials, tools, and resources, as well as in-person training workshops and online webinars, building capacity for new BPC researchers and the BPC community. The program provides undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and K12 teachers with training and resources to engage in broadening participation in computing research and evaluation (Dahlberg, 2011; Payton, 2015, Rorrer, 2019). The STARS BPC Toolkit includes guides for applying BPC research methodologies, a collection of BPC assessment instruments, and tools.

Eligibility: The Scholars Research Program is open to Undergraduate and Graduate Students or Faculty in a community college, college, university. K12 Teachers are also eligible. Ideal candidates will have strong interest in learning about a BPC area, be able to commit to a full academic year of engagement in Cohort activities. Preference will be given to applicants who have a compelling research project in mind. Project areas may include, but not be limited to: testing computing education materials and approaches in K12, community college, or university populations, replication of computing education studies in new contexts, qualitative studies, quantitative studies with secondary data sources, developing evidence based teacher professional development materials, etc.  Consideration will be made for projects that can be scaled into a single semester.

STARS BPC Research Scholars are guided by STARS faculty mentors and evaluation experts through identifying a research project with a well-defined hypothesis and study design that uses validated assessment instruments and tools. Special preference is in data analytics with the STARS Omnibus metadata across the 15 years of the STARS Alliance.  BPR Training workshops are offered through a webinar series and STARS Brain Trust, as well as in workshops at the STARS Celebration and ACM RESPECT conferences. 

STARS Research Associates (RAs) engage in an academic semester, or more, in a leadership role at their institutional chapter of STARS. RAs of should possess the following traits: commitment to inclusion, equity, diversity in computing, reliability, organization, curiosity and willingness to learn. Students are not required to have prior research skills. RAs will be expected to choose a learning pathway from the BPC Research Toolkit and participate in monthly webinars to facilitate action evaluation and research projects.  The RAs work from their own campuses and support their institutional chapter of STARS.