Thank you for your interest and questions regarding our INCLUDES effort.  The network is creating regional partnerships that include 2-year colleges, 4-year colleges, non-profits, industry, and government entities.  Our recent focus has been in understanding the assets that each of these groups bring to the area of broadening participation and student success.  These discussions have allowed us to begin the alignment of our efforts. Our focus is to build on what each of the different groups are doing, while sharing lessons learned and effective practices to further impact.  One early success is that one of our new partners from a top high-tech organization approached CAHSI to disseminate opportunities to members of our network and provide a Q&A session to answer questions about the programs.  The organization felt that it would be more effective to come to our network than to approach minority-serving institutions individually.  The result has been an increase in the number of funded projects in CAHSI, and these projects will impact K-12 students, undergraduate students, teachers, and faculty.  There are other new initiatives that are beginning across the different sections.  We are measuring success at multiple levels:  impact of partnerships (number of authentic partnerships measured through documented MOUs, engagement and investment in activities, alignment of goals, results attributed to the partnerships; number of sites adopting effective practices; number of sites in which practices have changed or improved because of the partnerships), organizational capacity (shared resources, training, infrastructure to sustain initiatives; rubric to measure % of sites meeting benchmarks in each area of organizational capacity; documentation of planning and decision-making process), and student impact (surveys measuring changes in students' networks, skills, aspirations, and identity; track transfer rates from 2-year to 4-year institutions; track number of students who enter graduate studies).

Hello Ann! Thanks so much for this very informative reply. There are certainly a lot of moving (and expanding) pieces to track and assess. Sounds like you are off to a great start and already seeing increased resources coming in as a result of the network.

Let me add also that the CAHSI INCLUDES project also allows us to expand more deeply into the graduate education community as well. Nationally we have a poor record when it comes to increasing recruitment, enrollment, and graduation rates for Latinx and other URM masters and, especially, doctoral students. This project gives us an opportunity to more strategically address pathways to graduate school, and interventions that can help ensure success in graduate school. Multiple mentors--from inside and outside the academy--are a critical element in that effort, among others.

Ann and Marjory,

Thanks for the detailed explanation of how CAHSI plans to expand its network both geographically as well as vertically in higher education pathways.

I will follow your progress with interest!

Rosann

This work looks fascinating. Piggybacking on Jill's question, how do you plan to have a unified approach to that works across the different 2-year & 4-year institutions in your region? Are there some common elements that you've found so far that enable diverse and inclusive pathways to computing degree completions?

In the recent regional meetings that we have had with our 2-year and 4-year institutions, the notion of different measures of student success related to the diverse pathways came up.  Because of that, we are working on defining a set of measures from the 2-year college's perspective, i.e., completing a certificate and entering the workforce, completing an associate's degree and entering the workforce, or transferring to a 4-year college, as well as re-entering higher education from the workforce. We are currently taking an asset-based approach in which we are identifying the assets that each individual, academic institution, non-profit, or other organization can contribute.  The individuals/organizations that are involved are identifying the appropriate partnerships to improve what each is doing now.  We have CAHSI's effective practices, and these are assets that members of the alliance may choose to adopt/adapt.  From our INCLUDES proceedings, we are disseminating the research around under-representation that can also inform decisions that are made among the alliance.

Hi Jeremy--here's a link to our logic model:  http://cahsi.cs.utep.edu/cahsiincludes/LogicMod... The idea of having a common logic model is a good idea.  The NSF Broadening Participation in Computing program did develop a common core for evaluation of the alliances founded through that program, which you may find interesting. Our evaluators are Heather Thiry and Sarah Hug, and it would be great to include them in your efforts.

Ann, thanks for sharing the logic model. I think it's a good example of how the outcomes for a network need to look at organization-level capacities and contributions, as opposed to the student-level outcomes.  Folks in this thread may not be aware that CAHSI's earlier work has developed and evaluated the student- and faculty-directed strategies and their outcomes.  Clearly the discussion reflects keen interest in this multi-layered approach!