Lessons Learned from Scaling Sisters Rise Up
Pages 773 - 779
Abstract
Sisters Rise Up is a near-peer mentoring program that attempts to help women of color (Black, Latina, and/or Native American) succeed in their Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science (CS) courses and on the exams. Women of color are underrepresented in computing careers and have lower pass rates on the AP CS exams than their White and Asian peers. AP Computer Science A (CSA) is equivalent to a college-level first course for computer science majors while AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) is equivalent to an introductory course for non-majors. Secondary students (ages 14-19) take AP courses for college credit and/or placement. Sisters Rise Up offers remote help sessions run by near-peer undergraduate students and uses free and interactive ebooks. Sisters Rise Up originated at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014. This paper reports on an effort to scale Sisters Rise Up to six institutions during the 2019-2020 academic year as well as an effort to support women of color through a single institution during 2020-2021. In 2019-2020 there were problems with getting Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, recruiting, training, and program fidelity. However, at least two of the six institutions had a high pass rate on the AP CS exams in 2019-2020. In 2019-2020 there were 17 women of color enrolled from five states, while in 2020-2021 Sisters Rise Up had 19 women of color enrolled from 12 states. This paper reviews the history, outlines the program details and rationale, presents the outcomes, and outlines future directions.
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Index Terms
- Lessons Learned from Scaling Sisters Rise Up
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1049 pages
ISBN:9781450390705
DOI:10.1145/3478431
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Published: 22 February 2022
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