Julian Scholars: Broadening Participation of Low-Income, First-Generation Computer Science Majors.

Using funding from the National Science Foundation, DePauw University launched a program for low-income, first-generation scholars in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields called Julian Scholars. All but one of the undergraduate students in the program began college expressing interest in medical careers, yet over half of the STEM graduates now pursue computer science graduate degrees or computing careers, which is an important statistic because little research about recruiting and retaining underrepresented low-income, first-generation computing students exists. Cornerstones of the program include a week-long summer research experience bridging high school and college, common classes for each cohort, mentoring, one-on-one resume and internship/research counseling, and scholarships. Rockman et al surveyed the Julian Scholars about the bridge program and additional program components to provide quantitative data and also held focus groups to collect qualitative data to augment graduation rates and postgraduation career information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]