BPC-DP: Developing a Framework and Community for IT Outreach

Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) will expand and broaden the impact of the Technology Ambassador Program (TAP). TAP was established in 2012 with support from the NSF-funded STARS Computing Corps program to address the need to increase the number of students who persist in information technology (IT) or IT related major. In its tenure of more than 10 years, the TAP program has been successful in developing the outreach expertise to serve the diverse populations of both GGC students and outreach workshop participants (K-12 and college students). This project will expand and broaden the impact of the TAP program by sharing the project team's experience and work products with the public, thereby creating a community dedicated to promoting IT outreach. To achieve this, the project team will create a framework and repository for IT outreach activities and use it to broaden and sustain a community devoted to outreach. In doing this, the project aims to bridge the gap in computing and encourage more people to pursue a career in IT. This Broadening Participation in Computing Demonstration Project will develop a framework for IT outreach activities and build outreach IT community. The most successful products of TAP are the fun and engaging workshop activities created by TAP students for target populations with diverse knowledge and backgrounds. These workshops are also testbeds where the TAP students research the effectiveness of their workshops for outreach and publish these results. Several of these publications have earned awards at regional and national conferences. Therefore, the contents of the workshops and the know-how for building them are the main expertise that TAP provides. The project will disseminate this expertise by sharing TAP workshop activities on a public online repository so that anyone can use them for outreach. Finally, a newly created alumni network will provide career development workshops to nurture the current TAP students and strengthen this exemplary program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.