Morehouse Center for Broadning Participation in Computing

CBPC Director Joins Board for Dominican YOUTH Non-Profit

December 2024
CBPC Executive Director, Dr. Kinnis Gosha, has been offered a seat as an Honorary Board member for the Youth Business Exchange Summer Camp Program. The program, headquartered in the Dominican Republic, provides a free, three-week summer camp experience focused on empowering disadvantaged and underprivileged youth from the United States, the Dominican Republic, and beyond.

CBPC Researchers Get Submission accepted to Top CS Education Conference

November 2024
CBPC Researchers Kaylah Mackroy, Whitney Nelson, and Kinnis Gosha's submission on "Leveraging Various Social Media Platforms to Mentor Black Computing Students on Graduate School Opportunities" has been accepted to the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE)  Technical Symposium 2025. The conference will be held in Pittsburgh, PA, in February 2025. 

CBPC Research Gets Certification in HPC

November 2024
CBPC research scientist Chris Thomas recently completed a certificate program at the University of Colorado-Bolder entitled "Introduction to High-Performance and Parallel Computing." This certification strengthens the CBPC's capacity to contribute to its NSF award, "Construction for the Leadership Class Computing Facility."

CBPC Engages Collaborators at Microsoft Research

October 2024
CBPC research scientist, Chris Thomas, met with other faculty grant recipients from the Accelerating Foundation Models Research (AFMR) initiative for Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond. This AFMR-MSI initiative supports Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions by providing access to cutting-edge foundation models hosted on Microsoft Azure through Microsoft AI services. 

CBPC Researchers Present New Research in Singapore

October 2024
CBPC Researchers, Kaylah Mackroy and Whitney Nelson, presented their research at the eLearn 2024 Conference in Singapore, Singapore. The two papers that were accepted for publication included, "Interest in Computing Careers among Dominican Republic Youth" and "Evaluating the Short-Term Effectiveness of Using Culturally Based Animations in Teaching AI."

New Boeing Grant to Support Morehouse Computing majors

October 2024
Boeing and the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund awarded the CBPC a new award to support the Conversion 2 Computing (C2C) Program. C2C will help transfer students from other institutions, undeclared majors who later chose CS or SWE, and students who transferred from different majors at Morehouse College. 

CBPC At '24 Tapia Conference

September 2024
Members of the CBPC attended the 2024 Richard Tapia Celebration of Computing in San Diego, CA. The team hosted two networking events to bring together Black students and faculty from the conference. Dr. Gosha co-led a panel entitled "Integrating Diversity, Social Justice, and Intersectionality in Program Evaluation to Broaden Participation in Computing (BPC): Insights from BPC Alliance Representatives." Dr. Renee Jordan co-led a workshop entitled "Effective Programs for Increasing Diversity in Computing: Learning and Engaging." 

Pre-freshman program expanded by new grant Award

September 2024
The CBPC has received a new grant from the Computing Research Association's UR2PhD program to support the IAAMCS Summer Bridge Experience (SBX). This award will enable the center to increase the number of African American computer science majors nationwide who start their collegiate programs with rigorous three-week Python coding experience. Read more >>

IAAMCS Renewal Funded by NSF

September 2024
The National Science Foundation has announced the successful funding of a renewal award to the CBPC entitled, "BPC-AE: Institute for African Americans in Computing Sciences (IAAMCS) National Network." The award will sustain the BPC Alliance until December 2029. More info >>

CBPC Welcomes new postdoctoral Researcher 

August 2024
Dr. Ashley Scruse has returned to the Atlanta University Center to take on a position as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Morehouse Center for Broadening Participation in Computing. She is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia in Bioinformatics. Her PhD topic is "Count Subnetworks Under Gene Duplication in Genetic Regulatory Networks." 

Center Researcher awarded with Grant to Fund AI Research 

August 2024
Morehouse researcher and Sage Visiting Professor of Artificial intelligence, Dr. David P. Brickler, has received a Microsoft-AUC Data Science Mini-Grant award entitled “AI Sentiment Analysis to Quantify Responses to Police De-Escalation Training with Virtual Reality.” The award is effective September 1, 2024, and expires August 31, 2025.

RISE UP is Back with Five New Tech Course offerings

June 2024
The RISE UP Male Technology Mentorship Program has started with the theme of "Expeditions in Computing." The program is available to middle and high school boys of color from the DeKalb County area.  Participating students will choose between two of five courses, including Conversational AI, Game Development, Web Programming, Salesforce Associate, and Sphero Robotics. The program is sponsored by District 4 Commissioner Steve Bradshaw, the DeKalb County Government Office of Human Services, Boeing, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the AUC Data Science Initiative.

CBPC Researcher awarded Grant to Fund Virtual Reality Research 

June 2024
Morehouse research scientist Whitney Nelson has received a Microsoft-AUC Data Science Mini-Grant award entitled “Evaluating the User Experience of a Virtual Technical Interview Tool.” Researchers at the Center for Broadening Participation in Computing are developing a virtual mock technical interview tool aimed at reducing bias and stress for Black and HBCU students during technical interviews. The study evaluated the tool’s usability using a user experience questionnaire, cognitive walkthroughs, and interviews, with the goal of providing design recommendations for improvement.

Past Event Highlight: The Institute on Expanding Opportunities for All Students

June 10-12, 2024
The Morehouse College Center for Broadening Participation in Computing (CBPC) proudly hosted the in-person sessions of The Institute on Expanding Opportunities for All Students. This event, in collaboration with Georgetown University, the American Talent Initiative, and Penn State, brought together diverse teams to develop projects aimed at enhancing student success and fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Participants engaged in both synchronous and asynchronous provocation talks, panels, workshops, and expert coaching sessions. The event also featured local gatherings for collaborative project work with "critical friends." Networking opportunities with colleagues from Morehouse College, Georgia State University, Calling Education NPC (South Africa) and other institutions enriched the experience, making it a resounding success.

Sage Makes two new gifts to Support the CBPC

June 2024
Sage, a global finance, human resources and payroll software company, has made the decision to continue its support of the Morehouse Center for Broadening Participation in Computing with two new gifts. The first gift, by the Sage Foundation, will support the instruction of a new elective course on Technology Micropreneurship. The course, co-taught by Sage professionals, will be offered in the Fall 2024 semester. Students enrolled in the course with a demonstrated financial need will have the option to receive a scholarship for the amount of $3,000. The second gift is for the establishment of the Sage Visiting Assistant Professor of Artificial Intelligence. 

New groundbreaking award to fund Education Research

April 2024
The CBPC, led by Rice University’s OpenStax awarded $90M to lead first-of-its-kind National Science Foundation research hub for transformational learning and education research. SafeInsights will bring together researchers, educational institutions, and digital learning platforms to enable timely, impactful studies designed to overcome the challenges faced in education. Read More >>

New Courses AVAILABLE for Atlanta Area Students!

Any undergraduate student currently enrolled at any of the following institutions is eligible to cross-register in any of our featured online and hybrid Spring 2024 courses through the ARCHE.
Qualifying institutions include Agnes Scott College, Brenau University, Clark Atlanta University, Clayton State University, Emory University, Georgia Gwinnett College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia State University, Kennesaw State University, Mercer University, Morehouse College, Oglethorpe University, Spelman College, University of Georgia, and the University of West Georgia. Click here to see which classes will be available for the Spring 2024 semester.

GOsha Selected to NSF CISE AC

October 2023
CBPC Executive Director, Dr. Kinnis Gosha, has formally accepted an invitation from the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to join the CISE Advisory Committee. As a member of the committee, Dr. Gosha will join other renowned computer science leaders in advising the nation in strategic planning and the policy formulation process. Currently, the annual budget award for the CISE Directorate exceeds 1.15 billion dollars.  

BICE approved by IEEE CS

September 2023
The IEEE Computer Society was formally announced as the technical co-sponsor for the 2024 Black Issues in Computing Education (BICE) Symposium. BICE 2024 is hosted by the CBPC and the IEEE Special Technical Community on Broadening Participation. The symposium will be held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on February 1-3, 2024. Click here to visit the symposium website. 

CBPC Partners with Georgia Tech in Advanced MANUFACTURING

September 2023
The Morehouse Center for Broadening Participation in Computing has received funding from Microsoft in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility on a new course to be taught in the Spring 2024 semester. The course will fuse art, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing. Students in the ARCHE course-sharing consortium are available to take the course. Click here to learn more about the course offering. 

CBPC at TAPIA Celebration

September 2023
Several Morehouse Computer Science and Software Engineering majors traveled to Dallas Texas for the CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference. Thanks to Microsoft and the STARS Alliance for travel support.

Sage Collaborates with CBPC

April 2023
Global software firm Sage and Morehouse College CBPC partner to expand the college’s Software Engineering curriculum and prepare a diverse pipeline of talent for tech jobs. Read More >>

CS Department faculty learn to engage HBCUS at CBPC

May 2023
The CBPC serves as the co-host for the 2023 Computing Research Association's Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) Plans Workshop. Over 80 computing faculty from across the country came to Atlanta to learn how to strengthen their department's BPC plan and engage with Minority Serving Institutions. Several attendees even stayed after the workshop to tour the campus of Morehouse College. Thanks to NSF CISE for funding this initiative.

JOrdan WIns Dissertation Award

March 2023
CBPC Associate Director, Dr. Renee Jordan, was recognized by Georgia State University for winning the 2023 Outstanding Dissertation in Learning Technologies Award.

CBPC Trains DeKalb Youth in Tech

July 2023
CBPC partners with the DeKalb County Human Services Department to host the RISE UP Summer Male Mentorship Program. 

GOsha elected to CRA Board

March 2023
CBPC Executive Director Dr. Kinnis Gosha was elected to the Computer Research Association's Board of Directors.
Learn more >>

CHerry Earns Meta Certification

August 2023
Morehouse Software Engineering Professor David Cherry has gained his certification in Meta Database Engineering from Meta. 

Morehouse College Launches the Center for Broadening PARTICIPATION in Computing

October 2022
Click the video to see the investiture of the center.