[OSCTC-planning] OSCTC meeting report 7/15/2014

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

I forgot to mention in the status update that of the now 12 likely events,
6 are at schools who've run events before, which bodes well both for the
general quality of our events as well as our efforts to build ongoing
communities in the locations we visit.  (FYI Mel one of the re-runs is
Purdue.  Let me know how much (if at all) you'd like to be involved with
that event.)

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Mallory Lim Chua <chuam at purdue.edu> wrote:

> > September and October seem to be widely preferred over November dates.
>
> I'm not surprised by this, because that's before midterms. After midterms,
> finals (and final projects) loom large on the horizon with Thanksgiving
> taking out a massive chunk of productivity time.
>

An alternative to running events in November would be for me to just accept
the idea of working a *ton* in September and October to run events, and
give myself most of November off.  I think it's worth seeing if we can get
anyone to pick the November date, though, since that would be by far the
less exhausting option.

We did run one event in November last year, so it's not unthinkable.  :)



>
> > We talked over what our specific goals are to ensure we're reaching
> > diverse populations of newcomers. I suggested the following
> methods/metrics,
> > and would welcome feedback on them:
>
> > A) For all OSCTC events, we identify any groups that are focused on
> > diversity in STEM education and invite them to participate in organizing.
>
> This is an awesome idea. I'm assuming you mean groups at the host
> university (SWE/NSBE/etc)? Two groups not commonly on the "types of
> diversity" list, but which could be, are disabled students (contact the
> school's disability resource center; they typically deal with both
> physical/mental disabilities) and LGBTQ students (which is, imo, a
> drastically under-acknowledged population). If you want to broaden even
> more, look at non-traditional students (which often correlates with class
> background -- some unis have special support centers or at least
> resource-people for non-traditional-aged students).
>
>

> > C) For all OSCTC events, we'll measure diversity of attendance
> > and compare it to the population of the CS department. Our goal
> > is to achieve 150% better representation at our events.
>
> I like this goal. I like it a lot. How will you measure diversity of
> attendance? (Are you counting a binary --
> straight-cis-able-bodied-middle-class-white-men vs
> not-straight-cis-able-bodied-middle-class-white-men? -- or something a
> little more complex, because intersectionality is a thing?)
>

I hope to use an expansive definition of diversity, including gender,
socioeconomic background, whether people are first generation college
students, non-traditional students, LGBTQ, have disabilities, are an
under-represented racial or ethnic groups.  Ideally we'd get this
information from the sign-up/sign-in forms.

One option I've thought of w/r/t this is to explain that we ask for this
information both for our measurement purposes but also to provide them with
more information about opportunities specific to them.  It would be great
to make a list of opportunities/groups that students would want to know
about and send them that information, things like Project ASCEND, OPW, etc.


Thanks for the feedback!
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