A recent study found that there is a litany of unmet needs that are serving as barriers for the CS education research community to grow in depth and breadth, including ensuring that the community is representative of the teachers and students that are studied. Cultivating a diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible CSEd research community requires simultaneous bottom-up and top-down alignment on practice standards, professional development, and wellbeing for all constituents that is rooted in politicized trust and collective impact. For this position paper, we engaged in an expository writing process using a confirmatory and elucidating research design to contextualize quantitative and qualitative data reported from our previous study within related work. Our results indicate that there is a variety of researcher-centered, researcher-adjacent, and research-centered barriers in CS education that affect researchers' practice, and personal and professional identities. These results were validated by findings from research in other fields, such as education, psychology, and organizational change. These findings highlight the need for intentional changes to be made, both top-down and bottom-up, to sustain and grow the CS education research community in a way that equitably supports the evolving needs of a diverse set of students as well as the diverse set of researchers who study interventions.

Google's CS Research Mentorship Program (CSRMP) cultivates pursuit and persistence in the computing research trajectory for students from historically marginalized groups through virtual career mentorship from industry professionals, a peer community, and just-in-time resources. Since 2018, 287 Google mentors have engaged 1,018 students from 247 institutions in the U.S. and Canada. The program employs socioemotional support and advocacy to navigate systemic barriers by validating students' intersectional identities in order to improve outcomes in core constructs for students: self-efficacy, sense of belonging, research skills, motivation to pursue graduate school and research careers, and intersectional capital. Evaluation outcomes from 400 matched respondents (68% response rate) indicate that CSRMP affects positive, statistically significant change in those constructs that largely persists across demographic subgroups. 80% aim to pursue computing research careers, and significantly fewer students are undecided about their future career. We were also able to identify disaggregated learnings: Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students are significantly less likely to submit to a research conference, and students from Historically Marginalized Groups (defined within) are significantly less likely to apply to a CS graduate program. We discuss key design elements of the program, how the findings are informing future iterations, and the potential for the model to scale.

Problem. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) need to be embedded throughout the computer science education (CSEd) research community in order to achieve empirically-based strategies in CSEd that is responsive to the needs of all of its constituents. However, there are no comprehensive studies that investigate what the barriers and challenges to DEI are among CSEd researchers.

In this experience report, we describe the rationale and need for immersive research experiences (IREs) in computer science (CS) that are designed to foster an inclusive community that encourages pursuit of graduate education for undergraduate women. Google's exploreCSR supports institutions across the US to execute IREs in computing throughout the academic year. We describe the program design and framework, the evaluation model, and present outcomes from two years of implementation across 29 institutions, with 1,983 (92% female) student participants collectively. The unique features of the program are that it aligns goals, measurements, and best practices across a national network of hands-on, localized IREs, resulting in peer communities and a sizable sample of undergraduates who identify as women and/or African-American/Black, American Indian/Alaska Native/Native American, Hispanic/Latinx, and/or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AAHN). We discuss recommendations for effective IRE programming based on our evaluation and the features found to be particularly salient for AAHN women. The contribution of this work is in describing how a national initiative for IREs builds community and creates conditions known to support persistence of women in computer science.

The demand for CS teacher professional development (PD) is increasing rapidly, but not all education stakeholders are equipped to identify CS PD needs, evaluate CS PD options, and track teacher and student outcomes. In this BOF, representatives of Google's CS educator PD grant program (formerly CS4HS) will share conclusions from the 2016 PD grant cycle and a recent literature review. Participants will discuss how the CS education community can disseminate knowledge about CS PD to the communities that need it most. At SIGCSE 2017, Google discussed CS PD best practices and common successes and challenges in creating sustainable PD programs. This year, we will discuss how to equitably scale these best practices so that education stakeholders are equipped to implement quality CS education, ensuring all students have quality CS learning experiences. This session is intended to be highly interactive and solution-oriented. Discussion themes and outcomes will be documented and shared with attendees.

Recent studies on the impact of CS teacher professional development (PD) opportunities have highlighted areas of improvement to effectively grow the number of well-prepared CS teachers. In this BoF Google will share data from CS4HS, an annual program that awards funding to research institutions and education nonprofits globally for the purpose of developing innovative and scalable CS PD that maps to local standards and demands. These data will serve as a starting point to engage the attendees in a wide-ranging and action-oriented discussion on ways the CS education community can improve our PD processes and results.