Participation in Computing

This text presents a focus on the efforts of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to broaden participation in computing of women, underrepresented minorities (especially African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians), and people with disabilities. The work illuminates a mostly overlooked aspect of NSF’s history, and provides an historical framework to the social scientists working on current Sloan Foundation grants related to underrepresentation in computing.

Topics and features:

Discusses the importance and extent of underrepresentation in computing
Surveys the coevolution of computing and the NSF since the end of the Second World War
Describes the history of NSF programs intended to broaden participation in the computing and STEM disciplines up to the present day
Examines in detail the Alliances formed under the NSF Broadening Participation in Computing program – arguably NSF’s most successful activity in this realm
Reviews NSF’s recent effort to revitalize formal K-12 education in the United States
Contrasts these formal efforts with more informal startup efforts to provide informal computer education



This important study will be of great value to a broad audience including social scientists and learning scientists interested in computing, computer scientists interested in issues of education or diversity, science policymakers, and historians of science and technology.

Dr. William Aspray is the Bill and Lewis Suit Professor of Information Technologies in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. His other Springer publications include Women
and Underrepresented Minorities in Computing, Formal and Informal Approaches to Food Policy and Food in the Internet Age.