The advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) started a serious discussion among educators on how LLMs would affect, e.g., curricula, assessments, and students' competencies. Generative AI and LLMs also raised ethical questions and concerns for computing educators and professionals.

While role models are frequently mentioned in literature to broaden participation in engineering education, there are diverse ways of understanding what role modeling is, what it entails and what theory we can use to support our own reflections as professionals and students in engineering who can act as role models for others in the discipline. In this special session we invite participants to discuss their own conceptions of role modeling, in terms of what can be modeled, the intention and awareness of it, and how this may be perceived by others. To support the discussions we introduce Grande’s framework of role modeling, which builds on role modeling theory. The format of the session will be that of a World Café, where participants will alternate their participation in discussions at five different tables, each table with a theme related to the framework. With these conversations we expect participants to go back to their own contexts in academia and industry to continue the discussion with their colleagues. We also invite them to connect with facilitators and others at the session to continue research efforts in the area of role modeling in engineering education.

This work contributes to a better understanding of computing teachers' perceptions of themselves as role models. Role models are described as important to address under-representation, yet there is little in-depth research on how role modeling works and what university teachers in computing can model to broaden participation in the discipline. We will analyze teachers' reflections on how they may, or want to, be perceived by their students, particularly in terms of professional competencies, emotions and attitudes towards well-being. We will use and further develop an already existing framework on role modeling in computing, and we will relate our findings to existing research on computing and science identities. Modeling aspects outside the computing norm can help provide students with a wider notion of what it means to be a computer scientist. Besides developing the theoretical understanding of computing teachers as role models , our work can support various ways of developing computing teachers' competences and departments' teaching culture. The results are one way to contribute to student diversity and equitable access, and more broadly increase the relevance of computing education for sustainability.

In this Special Session participants explore role modeling in the context of IEEE/ASEE Frontiers in Education (FIE). Role models are important in engineering education, due to their being beneficial for those who have them. While educators and other professionals may strive to be role models for others, there is little research in this area to support this goal. How do we talk about role models? How can we reflect on what we can model and how, as individuals and through giving visibility to others? Conferences like FIE are great venues to provide participants with role models. What kind of role models are FIE attendees after? In this special session participants at any career stage are introduced to Grande's theory of role modeling to address these questions. The groups will use Grande's theory to reflect on what kind of role models they would find interesting to look for in FIE. This aims to increase reflection on role modeling by the participants while also informing the organization of the event, who can consider increasing the visibility of the identified potential role models. Participants can later use a similar process to reconsider their role modeling in other areas, e.g. as teachers for their students, managers for their employees, or as conference organizers to analyze what kind of role models they are inviting to their events.

This full research paper uses ethical theories to discuss role models in computing education. Role models are beneficial for students but there is little work on how role modeling works and how teachers can reflect on their role modeling for their students. To address this we connect different theories to role modeling and their use to analyze role modeling as a teacher in engineering. We present theories with ethical implications from Aristotle, Wittgenstein and Biesta, then the themes related to these theories found in our interview study on computing teachers' experiences of role modeling.Our aim is to show how these theories could help deepen teachers' understanding of role modeling in the concrete classroom situations from an ethical perspective. According to these theories, students first see the teacher as a whole as a potential role model. Gradually and through guidance, students "mature" to doubt: to being able to question which aspects and achievements of their teachers are desirable to emulate and which to avoid imitating. We discuss the teacher's responsibility to make ethical judgements that include the scaffolding of this process.

The aim of this special session is to connect researchers interested in computing and engineering education for sustainability. We will explore the use of care and care ethics as a theoretical perspective to develop sustainability education. Theoretical discussions in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) research and feminist research will be introduced to develop an understanding of care for education. Those theories will be illustrated and motivated based on concrete examples in computing and computing education. The participants get to choose among four different topics of discussion in the session, 1) the role of education to prepare for care, 2) theoretical discussions of care as a concept to develop education and education research, 3) pedagogical methods to foster care, 4) care and responsibility in the curriculum. The outcome of this session is two-fold: The participants will gain new ways of conceiving education for human and planetary well-being and they will get to know researchers and educational developers with an interest in and experiences with sustainability education.

This full research paper contains a vocabulary to describe role modeling in engineering education. The term role model is widely used in the literature, particularly in broadening participation. However, it is loosely defined. Both its everyday and academic use varies. This was also observed during our interviews with teachers in the discipline: there was no consensus on what a role model is nor on the meaning of adjectives used to describe a role model. Considering the benefits of role models and the need for terminology that supports a common understanding of role modeling, we have developed a vocabulary around this phenomenon. We aim to support educators by providing them with a means to reflect on different dimensions of role modeling. We define what a role model in engineering is, and what they may model: an aspect (a competency, a character attribute or an attitude) or an achievement. Main actors and types of awareness and intention of the modeling are covered, as well as how the modeling may be perceived by others. We indicate differences and overlaps with terms such as mentor. Finally, we discuss challenges due to subjectiveness: who defines the norm for what an ideal professional in engineering is?

This full paper in the research track presents how individuals in computing education may have role models that represent different ways of engaging in the discipline and/or profession as a student or a professional. The study is based on two rounds of interview-based data collection at a department of computing: a longitudinal study of undergraduate students' view of the discipline, and an examination of their teachers' experiences as role models in computing education. Our results challenge traditional views of role models as those who set the norms, presenting instead role models as potentially capable of change, at different scales (including none), depending on their level of power. These role models are students, academics, and other professionals. We show that the potential of role models must be understood with respect to how engagement in computing is constructed in social interaction. Actions are suggested for relevant stakeholders to reflect on which role models are receiving more or less exposure than they should and how through these role models participation in computing can be broadened in terms of not only diverse backgrounds but also ways of engaging in computing.

Earlier studies have analyzed FIE and the community built around it, e.g. the origin, format, and future direction of the conference. We propose a new lens: that of diversity, with the motivation of identifying potential role models or the lack thereof. What is the evolution of the presence of diverse role models in FIE throughout the last decade? In this paper we analyze data containing the list of participants in the last 11 years of FIE. Since gender is not part of the registration form, we assume the gender of each participant based on the traditional gender assigned to their name. For the same reason, we use the traditional view of gender as binary. The results include the annual number of men and women attending the event, the attendees' roles in the conference divided by gender, the diversity in attendance based on the geographical location of the attendees' affiliations and the intersection with this aspect of the previous categories. We discuss future directions for the improvement of diversity in FIE and present possible expansions of this study.

Initiatives for women in computing exist since the 70's. However, little research has been done to study the effect they have on the women involved. Hence, this case study presents observations of the perceived value of the initiatives from the perspective of these women. This is a case study of one of the organizations contributing to this kind of initiative, the ACM (and its branch ACM-W), and how its volunteers see this work. The study is based on semi-structured interviews that were thematically coded and analysed. Results show that, depending on their generation, volunteers have different motivations and target their efforts at different audiences. Interviewees also reflected on how to further support women in computing. Finally, implications for future studies and lines of action are presented in the paper.

In a programming course at Uppsala University, Sweden, there has been a significant difference between the average grade of female students and that of their male counterparts. This work in progress presents some results and potential solutions related to this problem, and makes them explicit.