CMD-IT/ACM Tapia Conference BoF Presentation and Discussion

Quick links: presentation slides, conference program (our presentation is titled “Innovative Ways to Improve Small Liberal Arts College Computer Science Department Cultures, Communities, and Curricula”).

In the spring of 2021, I was finishing up my first term as a student liaison for the Pomona College Computer Science Department. A group of five dedicated students, the liaisons worked to represent the interests of students in department decisions, and further a sense of community in the department. In doing so, we learned a lot about how computer science works at small liberal arts colleges: departments are often faced with exploding enrollments in the midst of hiring challenges yet still benefit from the dynamics of relatively small communities and strong student-faculty relationships. We championed several initiatives to better the student experience in this context, including redesigning the undergraduate teaching assistant system, creating an affinity group for underrepresented students, and using Slack to provide online community during the pandemic.

Another liaison, Jared Mejia; a leader of the underrepresented students affinity group, Abdul Ajeigbe; and I wanted to present what we’d found to other small liberal arts computer science departments and see how they’d dealt with similar challenges. So we submitted a proposal for a “Birds of a Feather” session at the 2021 CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Conference, a prominent venue focused on diversity in computer science. Birds of a Feather (“BoF”) sessions prioritize discussion, allowing the presenters to have a real conversation with the audience on topics of community interest. We were accepted and presented on September 17 to a lively Zoom audience. Our abstract, titled “Innovative Ways to Improve Small Liberal Arts College Computer Science Department Cultures, Communities, and Curricula,” is visible in the program here under Jared’s name and our presentation slides can be found here; unfortunately, the discussion recording is no longer available on the Tapia website.