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Engaging undergraduates in research has been shown to improve retention, increase students' sense of computer science identity, and increase their chances of continuing to graduate school. Yet research experiences at most universities are ad hoc, and many undergraduates-particularly those from groups underrepresented in computing-do not have the opportunity to participate. The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) is a structured, academic-year group-based undergraduate research program designed to help universities vastly increase participation in research for early computing undergraduates. ERSP launched at UC San Diego in 2014 where it now annually engages over 50 second-year undergraduates, 59% of whom are women, and 22% of whom are from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The program's portable design has enabled its expansion to 7 other colleges and universities. This workshop will train participants in launching ERSP (or any part of it) at their university to increase and diversify the undergraduates participating in research. Workshop leaders are the ERSP directors at four universities. They will address how to launch and run the program in different contexts. They will provide an interactive, hands-on experience of running the program covering the following topics: developing and teaching a research methods class, student application and selection to ensure a diverse and supportive cohort, and creating a dual-mentoring structure to engage and retain early undergraduates without overburdening faculty. Workshop participants will be invited to join the ERSP virtual community to get support launching their own version of ERSP. 

The Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) was launched in 2014 at UC San Diego as a way to provide the benefits of research experiences to a large and diverse group of students early in their undergraduate computing career. ERSP is a structured program in which second-year undergraduate computing majors participate in a group-based, dual-mentored research apprenticeship over a full academic year. In its first four years ERSP engaged 139 students with a high proportion of women (68%) and racially minoritized students (19%), and participation in ERSP correlated with increased class grades. In 2018 we partnered with three additional universities to launch their own version of ERSP. Implementations at our partner sites have seen similar diversity and initial success, and have taught us how to implement the program in different contexts (e.g. quarters vs. semesters, different credit structures). This paper describes the structure of ERSP and how it can be adapted to different contexts to construct a scalable and inclusive research experience for early-career undergraduates in computing and related fields. 

In this guest editorial, we problematize the terms Latiné, Latinx, Latina, Latino, and Hispanic used to describe people with Latin American ancestry in the United States to better inform engineering education scholarship and practice. As members of communities that have been classified as Latiné/x/a/o or Hispanic, we are always challenged with the questions: What term should be used in our research, and why? As scholars who are also members of these communities, we bridge the contradictions emerging from our lived experiences and imposed realities while seeking to engage in a critical conversation emerging from our “theory in the flesh” (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981). While we situate the terms historically in this guest editorial, as an act of resistance, our title places the most recent term (Latiné) first to continue to challenge historical terminologies that demoralize and oppress our communities (Revelo et al., 2022). At the same time, we recognize that for some cultures, choosing to identify by one term over another has real-life implications and consequences, such as being the targets of discrimination and oppression and being seen as transgressors (Mejiaet al., 2022), or being perceived as insiders or outsiders. 

In this poster, we review the adoption of the Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP), developed at the University of California San Diego, to our institution, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The program was designed to support retention of students from marginalized backgrounds in the field of computing especially during the second year of their major. 

This Complete Research paper will describe the implementation of an introductory course (ENGR194) for first semester engineering students. The course is meant to improve retention and academic success of engineering first-year students in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The implementation of this course is part of an ongoing National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S-STEM) project. This paper reports on the impact of combinatorial enrollment in ENGR194 and a previously described two-week Summer Bridge Program (SBP) offered only for entering S-STEM scholars before their first semester. To measure the impact of this course on student retention and academic success, various evaluation metrics are compared for three separate Comparison Groups (C-Groups) of students. The results show that the ENGR194 course had a significant positive impact on the first-year retention rate. The results also revealed that students who participated in both ENGR194 and SBP (C-Group 1) made changes to their declared majors earlier than students who had only taken ENGR 123 or neither of the courses (C-Groups 2 and 3 respectively). Furthermore, students in C-Group 1 received better grades in math and science than their peers, and students in C-Groups 1 and 2 had significantly higher GPAs than their peers in C-Group 3. 

This paper provides detailed information for a poster that will be presented in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Grantees Poster Session during the 2020 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. The poster describes the progress and the state of an NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (S-STEM) project. The objectives of this project are to 1) enhance student learning by providing access to extra- and co-curricular experiences, 2) create a positive student experience through mentorship, and 3) ensure successful student placement in the STEM workforce or graduate school. S-STEM Scholars supported by this program receive financial, academic, professional, and social development via various evidence-based activities integrated throughout their four-year undergraduate degrees beginning during the summer prior to starting at the University. The paper describes the characteristics (demographics, high school GPA, ACT/SAT scores, etc.) of the Scholars supported by the S-STEM grant. The paper also provides information about the completed tasks of the project to date. The completed tasks include a system for recruiting academically talented and economically disadvantaged students, a Summer Bridge Program (SBP), a first semester introductory engineering course, and a system to recruit and maintain faculty mentors. The ongoing tasks include the execution of a service learning project course and a system for recruiting industry mentors. This paper reports detailed assessment and evaluation data about different project tasks and the academic success metrics of the Scholars. It also lists a set of recommendations based on the lessons learned in this S-STEM project.