STARS Ignite: A Program for Supporting Professors in Organizing Student Cohorts for Conferences

Academic computing departments are seeking ways to broaden participation, and many are encouraging individual faculty, staff, and students to attend diversity-oriented conferences, like the Tapia and STARS Celebrations of Diversity in Computing and Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Such conferences present opportunities to meet a broader community of people for professional development and networking, to be inspired by leaders in computing, and to celebrate diversity. However, while many institutions sponsor these conferences and support individual student attendance, students may not know how to leverage these opportunities effectively. We argue that leading a cohort of faculty/staff and students who attend a conference with the shared goal of broadening participation can provide lasting benefits for computing departments. This workshop will prepare faculty and staff to recruit and lead a team of students and leverage conference attendance to ignite broadening participation efforts. Through a hands-on collaborative process, the workshop provides the knowledge and tools needed to successfully lead a cohort, and helps attendees tailor the provided tools to their local strengths and needs to broaden participation in computing.