Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 22:04:14 GMT Server: NCSA/1.4.2 Content-type: text/html Last-modified: Sun, 07 Jan 1996 22:28:16 GMT Content-length: 7108
This note is an informal description of our tutoring and mentoring program for women and minority students. We hope this information is useful, and would be grateful for any suggestions or recommendations based on the experience of other departments. Please send correspondence to Alan Borning, borning@cs.washington.edu
Women and minority students are generally underrepresented in computer science and computer engineering programs, and our program is no exception. We have two separate degrees, Computer Science through the College of Arts and Science, and Computer Engineering through the College of Engineering. There is a very competitive admission process for both. Grades don't tell the whole story of course, but just for calibration, the average GPA of students admitted to Computer Engineering is about 3.8 and about 3.6 for Computer Science. Once students are admitted to the major, there is no further weeding out -- our intent is that all students who are admitted to the major should be able to complete it -- but it is nevertheless a difficult and demanding course of study.
In 1993, looking for ways to increase the retention and success of underrepresented minority students in our undergraduate majors, we instituted a tutoring program. The tutoring program has since expanded to include women who aren't minorities as well. In setting up and operating the program we've received help from several other programs in the College of Engineering, namely the Minority Science and Engineering Program (MSEP), Women in Engineering (WIE), and the Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership (ECSEL).
The tutor is a graduate student in our department, paid as a 20/hour week teaching assistant (the same as course TA's). We inform students who are eligible for tutoring about the program by e-mail, and sometimes by written letter when they first enter the program (since not all students are regular e-mail users when they begin the major). Participation is completely voluntary.
The first tutor, Derrick Weathersby, did most of the tutoring personally. (Tutoring was available for any CS majors course, which meant that Derrick had to know a lot of different material.) Derrick also paid much attention to the social and cultural aspects, as well as the pure academic ones, succeeding in creating a supportive environment for the students he tutored -- a sort of a coach role. For his work on the program, Derrick won the College of Engineering Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in Spring 1995.
Ruth Anderson has been the tutor since Autumn 1994, and has carried on this strong tradition. (Prior to accepting the tutor position, Ruth won the Department's Bob Bandes Memorial Award for outstanding work as a teaching assistant.) During this time, as noted above we expanded the program to include other undergraduate women in addition to minorities. To accomodate more students, Ruth changed her role to include both tutoring and coordinating a considerable number of volunteer tutors (who are other graduate students).
Another possible problem is that the program would cause resentments among students not receiving tutoring as being unfair. One of the undergraduate women (who didn't use the tutoring program) expressed this concern to me -- while we haven't heard complaints from other students, it is possible there are such feelings.
Finally, resources have been a recurring difficulty. Funding has been scrounged from various sources -- MSEP, ECSEL, money from an endowment within the department to fund scholarships and fellowships for women and minorities, and sometimes from our regular TA budget -- but we've managed. (The cost of the program is that for a TA for the academic year -- currently about $17,000.) A more difficult problem is that our department has a severe shortage of qualified TAs, and the program may remove a TA (often one of our best TAs) from the pool.
We haven't requested a formal evaluation since the first one, but the feedback from the students, volunteers, and advisors indicates that the program is continuing to be successful. For example, one student recently wrote:
I've been having a graduate student as my tutor for one of the cs courses i take ever since last winter. The tutoring program works perfectly for me. I not only get questions answered from those courses, but also general questions about graduate studies in this field. I got to know more in general the life being a grad CS student and my tutors have been giving me really good advice on what I could do in order to get myself better prepared for grad school.Another student writes:My tutors have been really helpful in my coursework. They know a lot about the specific field and they explain things well. Maybe it's just me, but this kind of one-to-one tutoring works very good for me.
Just a little thoughts about the tutoring program. I am really glad that we have this program here in the department.
I like it, I think it is very useful to talk to somebody one-on-one on a regular basis (more than at most 10 minutes in office hours). It helps me also to see a different way of looking at a problem, and I also like to have somebody knowledgeable I can talk to about a class. Verbalizing a problem often half solves a problem for me.Finally, many of the graduate student volunteer tutors said they had found being a tutor a rewarding experience.
borning@cs.washington.edu (Last Update: 12/17/95)