Powerful Pre-College and Pre-Professional Supports: CWIT's Bookend Approach to Inclusive Excellence in Undergraduate Tech Education

Abstract

The Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has a 21 year record of working to enable success for all women and other underrepresented groups in technology fields. CWIT supports students with a nurturing and challenging community, transformative leadership experiences, and professional development opportunities. Our goal is to prepare and empower our students to be change agents in creating technology workplaces that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive. In this presentation, we will highlight successful programs CWIT has used to enhance diversity and inclusion of underrepresented groups in the engineering and computing professions. These programs are designed to support the academic, leadership and professional development of undergraduate students and fall on two ends of a spectrum of support: pre-college programs and pre-professional programs. We will engage CoNECD attendees by sharing how these practices were motivated, developed, and implemented, as well as how we assess our impact and tips for transferring these practices to other settings.