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Creating a Computer Science and Software Engineering Department that supports students with diverse identities and backgrounds is essential to creating a computing workforce that reflects the world at large. Inspired by the work of Metcalf et al.'s survey conducted at the University of Illinois [1], we use the same methods to examine the state of our computing department with respect to issues of inclusive climate and student sense of belonging, which have been shown to be important for retention in STEM fields [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. We use the four areas that contribute to belonging based on the work of Rainey et al. [9] along with a fifth category of learning environment in order to assess our students' sense of belonging. This paper's main focus is based on results from two surveys of California Polytechnic State University students conducted exactly one year apart (2019: n = 154, 2020: n = 122). Both surveys were sent to all computing majors in Spring quarter, the last quarter of the regular academic year. We found that 58-68% of students felt they were not typical computer scientists, which mirrors the results of the survey conducted at the University of Illinois [1], indicating that the lack of belonging is perhaps a ubiquitous problem within the field of computing. Other salient results include identifying the presence of statistically significant differences for some groups based on gender and race & ethnicity. These differences were found when looking at students' senses of their science identity and learning environment. We also found that women had a significantly greater chance of having strong interpersonal relationships within computing. The survey results are augmented by a survey of first-quarter freshmen in Fall 2019 (n = 44) and student interviews conducted in Spring 2021 (n = 15). We hope that the addition of these results explain and expand upon our main results and add insight as to how the student experience can evolve from a student's first quarter onward. These differences shine an important light on some positive trends as well as several concerning differences to be examined in our quest to create a diverse and equitable department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research used a mixed-methods approach to understand how framing engineering as an altruistic, or prosocial, profession affected the engineering identity development of students from underrepresented minorities in STEM. The research was conducted through a theoretical lens encompassing the Goal Congruity Framework and Social Congruity Theory. To better understand the impacts of altruistic framing, a traditional Saturday STEM program with participants from the same demographics were studied for comparison. Through interviews and surveys, we found that altruistic framing led to meaningful changes in students' appreciation of engineering and, in some cases, new interests in pursuing engineering as a career. Students also increased their interest in engineering, but their definitions of the field did not broaden appreciably. Some found new interests, but they did not have the same type of transformative experience as the altruism-focused interventions. This research has shown that framing engineering as an altruistic career path can lead to meaningful changes in students' definitions of engineering and their connection of engineering to their career interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]