ABSTRACT
Interest in information technology (IT) careers, in general, remains flat among college students and interest among women and non-majority students has even declined in recent years. Further, many researchers have expressed concern that students are ill-equipped to address many of the human, social, and ethical issues that typically arise in a technical context. At the same time, there is a growing body of work that suggests service-learning initiatives benefit all students, particularly women and minority students, in terms of stronger skill preparation and sense of collective belonging. The objective of this paper is to describe a six-week summer service-learning program aimed at addressing the under representation of African American students in the IT field. We found that the students experienced two significant outcomes: exposure to the skills necessary to enter the IT profession (e.g., project management, technical, and teamwork abilities); and participation in professional development opportunities that fostered a sense of belonging in the field.
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Index Terms
- Information systems in the community: a summer immersion program for students from historically black colleges and universities (hbcus)
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