Oct. 18, 2021 — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a multimillion-dollar grant in support of the Equity in Computing Education Policies, Pathways, and Practices (ECEP 3) Project at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin).
Funded by NSF since 2012, ECEP is a nationally recognized leader in equity-focused computer science education (CSEd), research and policy. The ECEP 3 grant represents the next phase in the complex systemic change process initiated by NSF’s support for ECEP.
The ECEP project is led by TACC’s Expanding Pathways in Computing Group (EPIC), a team of 23 people dedicated to broadening participation in K-12 computing pathways through research, outreach, professional development, and policy advocacy.
“ECEP leaders are working to change the face of K-12 CS education through policy reform and data transparency,” said Carol Fletcher, director of EPIC at UT Austin and principal investigator for ECEP. “Helping each state to develop data systems that can pinpoint where inequities exist in capacity, access, participation, or experiences of K-12 CSEd will be a key feature of the ECEP 3 project.”
ECEP 3’s mission is to build state-level capacity to develop, advocate for, implement, and measure equity-explicit, state-initiated policies designed to broaden participation in K-12 computing. The ECEP Alliance consists of leadership teams from 22 states and the territory of Puerto Rico, all focused on building diverse and inclusive pathways in computing for elementary, middle- and high-school students.
ECEP 3 will confront the deeply ingrained systemic barriers that continue to exclude women, persons with disabilities, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and other marginalized students identified through state data from computing pathways in K-12.
The NSF grant will fund the ECEP 3 project for three years.
“Only half of our nation’s high schools offer computer science courses, and even when schools offer these courses, they don’t often reflect the diversity of our student population,” Fletcher said. “If we want to leverage the power of computing to tackle our nation’s toughest challenges, we need to engage the full range of expertise and creativity in our nation’s classrooms.”
ECEP has four primary goals:
- To serve as a national hub for state leaders dedicated to broadening participation in CS.
- To support states in developing and implementing equity-explicit policies, practices, and pathways that promote diversity in CS education across a state.
- To collaboratively develop a set of common metrics for measuring state and national progress toward equitable CS education.
- To implement state-level strategies to increase equitable capacity for and diverse student access to, participation in, and experiences of K-12 CS education.
“ECEP’s focus on state CS education systems and policies as the unit of change is designed to help states do this work at scale,” Fletcher said.
The University of Texas at Austin leads the ECEP Alliance network of states. Other partners include Indiana University, The University of California-Irvine, Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, CSforAll, SageFox Consulting, and the Computer Science Teachers Association.
Learn more about the ECEP Alliance: https://ecepalliance.org.
Source: Damian Hopkins, Texas Advanced Computing Center