Grants

Why Grants?

To further enhance its impact, CS Kickstart can explore the option of applying for grants. Grants provide valuable financial resources that can be utilized for various initiatives, such as hosting workshops, organizing mentorship programs, or expanding outreach efforts. By applying for grants, CS Kickstart can access funding opportunities offered by educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and governmental agencies. Apart from the financial benefits, grants can also elevate the club's visibility and credibility within the computer science community. Receiving grants showcases the dedication and value CS Kickstart brings to its members and the broader community, attracting potential sponsors and collaborators. Overall, grants play a pivotal role in supporting CS Kickstart's mission, enabling the club to create meaningful experiences and opportunities for aspiring computer scientists while fostering a supportive and inclusive learning environment.

UC Berkeley's CS Kickstart was funded by a Microsoft Seed Grant when we first began. This opened doors to company sponsorships and eventually our departmental sponsorship with UC Berkeley EECS.

How to Apply

Here's a list of companies that have been known to offer grants or funding opportunities to support initiatives promoting women in tech:

1. Google

2. Microsoft

3. AnitaB

4. NCWIT

5. SWE

6. IBM

7. Intel

8. Apple

9. Facebook

10. Amazon

11. Cisco

12. Adobe

13. Salesforce

14. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

15. Verizon

16. Dell Technologies

17. Oracle

18. Qualcomm

19. Accenture

20. General Electric (GE)

21. Northrop Grumman

22. AT&T

23. Goldman Sachs

Please note that the availability and specific details of grant programs may change over time. It's recommended to visit the respective companies' websites and explore their philanthropic or corporate social responsibility sections for up-to-date information on grant opportunities they offer each year. We also recommend you create a grant tracker document to note down potential due dates.

Sample Grant Application Essay

CS KickStart - NCWIT/Microsoft Seed Fund

1 Project Overview

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department at the University of California, Berkeley has a longstanding commitment to diversity. It has employed multiple strategies to retain students that select the EECS major. The department has developed faculty mentorship programs, it has encouraged and supported community organizations, and it has redesigned its introductory courses to give a broader audience better access to computer science. These strategies have been effective and once a student declares EECS as her major, she is less likely to drop out of the introductory programming course [8]. However, the number of female students within the department is still low (119 female students or 11.3% in EECS). Many students that enter college do not even consider computer science as a major, often because they do not know what computer science is or have an overly narrow perception of the domain [9]. Without prior experience in programming, students can also feel overwhelmed by introductory computer science classes and are more likely to drop them [8]. In this initiative we hope to launch a program, CS KickStart, to widely recruit and support interested, but inexperienced students. CS KickStart is a one week enrichment program for incoming undergraduate women at UC Berkeley that love and excel at math and sciences, but have little or no background in computer science. For the first time in August of 2011, 30 students will come to Berkeley before the regular semester to explore computer science. During the week, the students will live together and experience computer science through a variety of activities including:

• Programming Labs (18 hours): During the programming labs, students will acquire basic programming skills and work on a team project.

• ”What is Computer Science?” (7 hours): To develop students’ understanding of computer science, we will host a series of talks from ”How computer science is going to save the world” to one hour lectures about computer security, computer graphics, computer systems, computational biology and data management.

• ”Who are Computer Scientists?” (3 hours): Computer scientists working in industry and academia will visit our program to talk to students about their job as a computer scientist.

• Life at Berkeley (3 hours): Three information sessions will allow participants to learn from current undergraduates about the campus and the computer science major and minor at Berkeley.

• Field Trip (6 hours): Students will visit a Silicon Valley company to explore an example work environment for a computer scientist.

• Social Activities: In addition to the daily activities, students will participate in a number of social activities led by current undergraduates (e.g. ice cream social, game night).

CS KickStart builds upon best practices in computer science education research to inspire, empower, inform, connect and mentor women that may pursue computer science.

2 Alignment with NCWIT Promising Practice or existing program

Women choose to not study computer science or drop out of computer science for a variety of reasons [9], including: women have a false image of computer science and believe it is isolating and not social, they lack female role models, they feel intimidated because they might not have as much experience with computers or programming as their male classmates, they feel isolated in a field dominated by males, or they do not have sufficient support from fellow students when working on class homework. CS KickStart aims to address this range of reasons. Below we describe the details and rationale for each of the program goals.

Inspire. We seek to share with our students the creativity, power, and beauty of computer science to inspire them to study computer science. In order to emphasize programming as a tool to build useful things [6], students will develop a basic photo editing program (like Photoshop) during this course. The curriculum is based upon the media computation approach, a NCWIT promising practice developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology by Mark Guzdial [7]. We will also organize sessions where participants will interact with computer scientists from academia and industry. These computer scientists will share their career paths, their struggles, and their passion for their work, so as to serve as rolemodels and inspiration for our participants.

Empower. We seek to empower participants that have little or no background in computer science with programming skills. Students will learn how to write basic algorithms and participate in other interactive activities, such as the CS Unplugged activities [11], where students reason about computer science topics without the use of a computer. The programming lab will combine lectures about basic syntax, functions, recursions, algorithms etc. and hands-on programming exercises. Students will work in pairs and undergraduate mentors will be present in the lab to answer questions. Our curriculum will endow students with greater confidence and background in computer science

Inform. We seek to give students and their families a better understanding of what computer science is and to therefore correct existing misconceptions. For example, during our family welcome dinner, Professor Katherine Yelick will address typical misconceptions in her talk, because families are a major influence on students’ major selection [9]. Throughout the week, students will be exposed to the opportunities within computer science and to the relevance of computer science in everyday life. We designed two types of sessions to work towards this goal. In the ”What is computer science?” talks, students will learn about different areas of computer science and will therefore be exposed to the diversity and breadth of computer science. In the ”Who are computer scientists?” talks, students will meet computer scientists and learn about the type of work they do. Meeting computer scientists might help eliminate misconceptions and provide students with potential role models.

Connect. We seek to develop a community of women with an interest in computer science. It is common for women to feel isolated within computer science courses [9], particularly given the low representation of women at research institutions [5]. The residential program provides opportunities all day and evening for the students to build a community with which to begin the school year. For example, during the computer programming labs, students will pair program (a NCWIT promising practice) to tackle tough problems. Pair programming [12] is used throughout UC Berkeley’s undergraduate curriculum and provides opportunities for collaboration and team building. In the evenings, current undergraduates will lead social activities to build community.

Mentor. We seek to integrate the CS KickStart community with the thriving community organizations at UC Berkeley for continued academic and social support. Mentorship may be an important element to support the success of women in computer science [9]. A key strength of CS KickStart is the existing network of community groups to support and mentor women in EECS, including undergraduate organizations (AWE: Association ofWomen in EECS) and graduate organizations (WICSE:Women in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, GWE: GraduateWomen of Engineering). We plan to connect the participants to these existing organizations to ensure continued support throughout their academic career.

3. Implementation Plan and Schedule

We will offer the CS KickStart program for the first time in the Summer of 2011. In May of 2011, admitted students will declare their intention to attend UC Berkeley. Through the campus orientation program, phone calls, and emails, we will begin recruiting participants. Student applications will be due June 15th and students will be notified within a week if they have been accepted into the program. During the one week program, students will participate in six types of activities (programming labs, talks about what computer science is, talks about who computer scientists are, talks about life at Berkeley, a field trip, and social activities). We provide a detailed schedule of the program on our website (http://cs-kickstart.berkeley.edu/program.html).

4. Budget Justification

The total budget for the project is $23,525, which includes the UC Berkeley overhead fee of 2.5%. CS KickStart is partially supported by a National Science Foundation Empowering Leadership Alliance grant (PI Ruzena Bajcsy), with a contribution of $10,000. Costs and details of each category from the full budget are provided below.

Staff ($5,200) : The majority of the program is run by volunteers. The exceptions are two graduate student organizers, an instructor for the course, two resident assistants to supervise participants in the evening and two daily assistants, required by UC Berkeley, to supervise the participants during the day.

Accommodation ($7,780) : All students and two resident assistants will be housed in UC Berkeley dormitories for the duration of the program. Meals ($7,106) : The program will provide breakfast ($9), lunch ($11) and dinner ($13) for all participants and two resident assistants. Additional lunches are included for student volunteers and faculty mentors.

Supplies ($2956) : Participants will be provided with the required textbook for the course and other supplies such as binder, pen, and paper.

5. Sustainability Plan

CS KickStart has the support of the faculty, students and administration of UC Berkeley. We have the commitment of eleven faculty members http://cs-kickstart.berkeley.edu/team.html), who will interact with participants formally and informally throughout the program as guest speakers, lunch guests and volunteer tutors during programming labs. The undergraduate students in the Association of Women in EECS (AWE) and graduate students in the Women in

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (WICSE) have committed to support CS KickStart through mentoring the participants and taking the lead on the organization and execution of the program. Collaboration with a sister program at UC Berkeley for incoming physical science students, the Berkeley Compass Project [1], now in its fourth year, greatly benefits the CS KickStart initiative. The Berkeley Compass Project has developed and shared mechanisms for recruitment, securing accommodation and catering, developing and evaluating a sustainable outreach program, and addressing other bureaucratic requirements at UC Berkeley. The UC Berkeley administration recently announced the Innovation Grant that we hope will serve as an ongoing funding source for the program.

CS KickStart is based upon similar programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (WTP: the Women’s Technology Program [3]) and ETH Zurich (Schnupperstudium [2]). These programs have demonstrated the feasibility to achieve the goals of CS KickStart (Section 2). MIT reports that among the WTP alumnae 62% are in a branch of engineering or computer science and another 23% are majoring in a field of science or mathematics. Many of these women say that they would never have considered majoring in engineering or computer science before attending WTP. At ETH Zurich, 74% of the participants between 2004 and 2008 expressed that the program had a positive or strongly positive effect on their motivation to study computer science. After the program, over 95% said that they had a better understanding of what computer science is [10].

6. Evaluation

The primary outcome measure of our evaluation will be whether students in CS Kickstart chose to take additional computer science courses or pursue a major in computer science or EECS. To inform future interventions at UC Berkeley and beyond, we will interview program volunteers, staff, and participants to evaluate the effectiveness of the project in meeting each of the program goals. We will stay in touch with the participants through the women’s organizations in the EECS department (AWE and WICSE). We will interview participants one year later to collect information about how CS KickStart has helped them in their first year at UC Berkeley and how the program could have been improved. We will investigate the success of the intervention by replicating the assessment metrics used by model programs, the Experience of the Major toolkit [4], and additional measures aligned with each goal of the program.

References

[1] Berkeley Compass Project. http://www.berkeleycompassproject.org/.

[2] ETHZ Schnupperstudium. http://www.frauen.inf.ethz.ch/.

[3] MIT Women’s Technology Program. http://wtp.mit.edu/eecs/index.html.

[4] Survey-in-a-Box: Student Experience of the Major (SEM). http://www.ncwit.org/resources.res.box.survey.html.

[5] Computing Research Association Taulbee Survey, 2009. http://www.cra.org/resources/taulbee/.

[6] COHOON, J., AND ASPRAY, W. A critical review of the research on women’s participation in postsecondary computing education. Women and information technology: Research on underrepresentation (2006), 137–180.

[7] GUZDIAL, M. A media computation course for non-majors. ACM SIGCSE Bulletin 35, 3 (2003), 104–108.

[8] LEWIS, C. M. Attrition in introductory computer science at the university of california, berkeley. Tech. rep., EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, Oct 2010.

[9] MARGOLIS, J., AND FISHER, A. Unlocking the clubhouse: Women in computing. The MIT Press, 2003.

[10] POEPPER, C., AND ALTENHOFF, A. What Drives Young Women to Study Computer Science in Switzerland?– Experiences on Promoting Computer Science Studies for Female High School Graduates. Proceedings of the 5th European Symposium on Gender and ICT 6, 8 (2009), 10.

[11] TAUB, R., BEN-ARI, M., AND ARMONI, M. The effect of CS unplugged on middle-school students’ views of CS. In Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (2009), ACM, pp. 99–103.

[12] WILLIAMS, L., AND UPCHURCH, R. In support of student pair-programming. In Proceedings of the thirtysecond SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer Science Education (2001), ACM, p. 331.