“None of This Happens in a Vacuum”: The Impact of External Dynamics on Department Chairs’ Efforts to Broaden Participation in Undergraduate Computing

ABSTRACT

Department chairs play a key role in efforts to diversify higher education, particularly in fields like computer science that face long-standing gender and racial/ethnic gaps. This study considers the role of computer science department chairs in guiding broadening participation efforts and how they make sense of external dynamics that influence their efforts.

Objective

This study seeks to better understand the external dynamics that shaped diversity efforts within their departments and how chairs positioned themselves in relation to those dynamics.

Method

Using the Inclusive Excellence Model as a conceptual framework this longitudinal qualitative study draws on 29 interviews conducted over two years with 18 computer science department chairs from 15 research universities across the United States.

Findings

Chairs described actively grappling with and leveraging external dynamics across three dimensions: systemic, political, and bureaucratic/structural. While existing literature on department chairs often frame external dynamics as unidirectionally impacting departmental efforts, we found that chairs saw their role as agentive.

Implications

As efforts to broaden participation in computing (BPC) continue to expand, we argue that chairs must recognize and harness the complex and interconnected external forces that influence their work in order to fully actualize their role as transformative leaders.

KEYWORDS:

• Department chair
• computer science
• diversity
• undergraduate education
• department change
• inclusive excellence

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by AntiaB.org and Pivotal Ventures. We are also grateful to our participants, our research team members who managed data collection and assisted with analysis, and our reviewers and editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. While the language “women and Students of Color” is commonly used in STEM literature, we acknowledge this phrasing risks contributing to “an entrenched misunderstanding of how women’s experiences as women also intersect with their experiences as members of ethnic minority groups” (Bowleg, 2008, p. 313). Hence, we want to draw direct attention to the ongoing need to center Women of Color in research on women’s experiences in computing.

2. Affirmative action in higher education refers to practice of giving consideration to groups that have been historically excluded or discriminated against, for example, in hiring and admissions processes.

3. A state that had overturned U.S. federal affirmative action legislation.

4. Title IX, part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, is a U.S. federal law that protects people from discrimination on the basis of sex.

5. In the U.S., the National School Lunch Program provides free or reduced-cost meals to eligible students in school. The percentage of NSLP-eligible students is a proxy measure for schools that disproportionately serve large populations of students experiencing poverty (National School Lunch Program, 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Pivotal Ventures and AnitaB.org;