Engendering Community to Computer Science Freshmen through an Early Arrival Program

As Computer Science departments nationally see increasing enrollments, first generation college students and students from low-income backgrounds can suffer due to larger class sizes, scarcity of resources (such as fewer opportunities and longer waits to meet one-on-one with the professor or teaching assistant), and lack of community. Computer science as a field continues to struggle with recruiting and retaining diverse students. This leads to students struggling to find a community of like-minded students with whom they can study, take classes, attend departmental events, and so on. In our S-STEM project (Community Engaged Scholars in Computer Science), we are focused on promoting community engagement by providing students with opportunities to make connections in the department, in the university, and in the technical community. The first major project activity, a one-week Early Arrival program, took place just prior to the start of their first semester at our university. The program introduced students to educational resources on campus as well as preliminary computer science concepts. The Early Arrival program also included social activities with faculty, current students, student leaders from our department’s student organizations, and tutors from the peer tutoring center in our department. The program was open to other incoming local freshmen as well. This helped students in our program make connections with other incoming students. Based on the evaluation of the Early Arrival program, students found the introduction to the major requirements, hands-on sessions on Python and Unix, and a discussion of potential career paths for CS majors as the most useful sessions.