CUE-T: A Study of the Creation of Interdisciplinary Computing Majors - Their Implementation and Impact on Broadening Participation in Computing at 10 Public Universities

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment opportunities in computing are projected to grow much faster than all other disciplines. The goal of this project, a collaboration between the Center for Inclusive Computing and 10 large public universities located across eight different states, is to implement a series of Interdisciplinary Computing Majors (ICMs) in such a way that students who are new to computing, and did not enter university as computing majors, are attracted to discover and persist in their chosen ICM. The expected outcome of this project is an increase in the number of universities offering ICMs, and a more diverse pool of career-ready graduates who can satisfy the growing need for computing occupations in the United States. The project team will examine the results and impact of the implementation of the ICMs and document the outcomes in a set of case studies that explain the implementation plan and data for each school. Given recent advances in AI, an essential outcome of this project will be to determine how to best integrate AI and other disciplines. The project team will examine how universities can create ICMs in which the computing side of the curriculum includes an emphasis on learning and ethically applying AI to the other discipline. The ICM case studies, complete with data measuring the change in the demographics of declared majors, will provide a generalized road map of best practices for other universities interested in implementing interdisciplinary computing majors. This work will be guided by an advisory council that will meet with the project team once a quarter to review learnings, data collection and generalizations. 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.