Funded by the National Science Foundation
African American Researchers in Computing Sciences (AARCS) is a program that aims to broaden the participation of African Americans at the levels of tenure track faculty and research scientists in the computing sciences. African Americans represent 5.2% of all university faculty in the United States of America. In computer science, African Americans represent 1.1% of the faculty, 0.88% of tenure track faculty. The African American Researchers in Computing Sciences (AARCS) program addresses this significant representation gap in the computing sciences. This program is designed to broaden African American participation at the tenure track faculty and research scientist levels of the education pipeline through the form of a demonstration project. The basis for this demonstration project is founded on empirical research conducted by social scientists that reinforce the program’s goals. Although African Americans are the target group for this program, the AARCS program will serve as a model that can be used to target other underrepresented groups. The AARCS program will serve as an empirically evaluated model that can be incorporated into larger NSF Alliance projects as well as on college campuses. The Wei LAB manages the research and evaluation activities for this grant.