This year over 80 students were able to attend thanks to the generous support of their departments. In many cases, departments sponsored multiple students, which resulted in student participants representing 124 distinct masters and PhD granting institutions. 

Figure I shows that 20% of students were in masters programs and 80% in PhD programs. Figure II shows student race and ethnicity. 39% are U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Only 5% of the attendees self-identified as African Americans and 4% as Hispanic, even though we accepted all who applied this year. Unfortunately, ethnic minority women are even more severely under represented compared to ethnic minority men in computing. Under representation can lead to feelings of isolation, lack of fit, and attrition. Developing networks of social support with others who share similar experiences often helps individuals persist in the face of adversity. Most women graduate students find themselves in the minority within their computing departments. Furthermore, variations in advisor mentoring strengths and unconscious biases can disproportionally discourage students that already feel isolated.

Goals and execution

To address these problems, CRA-W created Grad Cohort, a two day workshop, to help students to connect with peers and senior role models, and to provide resources on how to build a successful research career.

CRA-W organizes the workshop into plenary sessions, presentation and panel tracks, a poster session, and individual mentoring (new this year) with plenty of time for questions. CRA-W has three simultaneous tracks that deliver material most appropriate for first, second, and third year students, although students are free and do move between tracks. The first evening includes a reception with a DJ and dancing.

Professors Lori Clarke, Sandhya Dwarkadas, and Lori Pollock organized this year’s workshop, selecting students from the 503 applicants, contacting department chairs for additional funding, choosing speakers, and content. CRA Director of Programs Erik Russell handled all the logistics, including reimbursing the students. The co-chairs invite carefully vetted successful women researchers to serve as speakers and mentors. Volunteer speakers include professors, government, and industrial researchers, who serve as role models from a range of institutions, such as Rochester, Princeton, Georgia Tech, Delaware University, the University of Massachusetts, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft Research. The speakers are very accomplished with many prestigious research awards, this year including at least seven ACM Fellows.

Another highlight this year was the plenary session on the "Future of Computer Science," given by Dr. Farnam Jahanian, Director of CISE at the National Science Foundation, who pointed to critical problems such as secure systems, cyber physical systems, and the ending of Moore's law as research directions and opportunities critical to our nation.

Other popular sessions included "Finding a Research Topic," "Networking," and "Balancing graduate school and personal life." Between 80% to 90% of student participants in our post-workshop survey described most sessions as "quite a bit" or "extremely useful." For more details on the agenda, please click here.  For more details on student changes in knowledge, peer and mentor networks, and favorite sessions, please see the CERP report on the post-workshop surveys.

This year for the first time the workshop offered as the final session, an hour, which turned into two, for formal individual mentoring. The mentors each occupied one table and then individual students had 5 to 10 minutes to ask them for personal advice on their careers and curriculum vitae. This session was extremely popular -- I think every student joined and stayed in line. Many of the mentors stayed late to make sure every student got the opportunity to speak to a mentor individually. The students asked questions about job opportunities, how to know if they were good at research, and strategies for dealing with difficult people and situations. By popular demand, the workshop will offer more time for this session next year.

Results: CRA-W programs move the needle