The University of Vermont is one of fifteen universities across the United States joining a new initiative designed to increase the percentage of their computer science undergraduate majors that are female and students of color.

 The “BRAID” Initiative (Building Recruiting And Inclusion for Diversity) — founded and led by the Anita Borg Institute (a non-profit organization focused on advancing women in computing) and Harvey Mudd College in California, was announced Sept. 24 by Hillary Clinton at the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. BRAID is supported by three-year funding commitments from Facebook, Google, Intel and Microsoft.

“The UVM Computer Science Department is committed to increasing diversity in our enrollments,” said professor Maggie Eppstein. Since 2012, when Eppstein became chair of the department, “we have initiated several activities designed to increase and broaden recruitment and retention; we succeeded in increasing our percentage of undergraduate female CS majors from 9 percent in 2011 to 17 percent in 2013, but we still have only a few percent students of color; we still clearly have a long way to go," Eppstein said. "The BRAID initiative will be a significant help in this work."

“Undergraduate computer science departments across the country are interested in attracting women and underrepresented minorities to their programs,” said Telle Whitney, president and CEO of the Anita Borg Institute. “BRAID is designed to jump start their efforts and document the results to identify best practices that consistently yield results.”

Under BRAID, UVM and the other academic institutions’ computer science departments will implement a number of approaches that have succeeded at Harvey Mudd and other institutions -- including expanding outreach to high school teachers and students, modifying introductory CS courses to make them more appealing and less intimidating to students from underrepresented groups, building community among underrepresented students, and developing interdisciplinary majors between CS and other fields.

“The BRAID initiative is the most exciting project I’ve been involved with to expand diversity in computer science,” said Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College. “I’m thrilled by how enthusiastic department chairs have been about taking on this initiative to change their culture in a way that will make it more inclusive to underrepresented groups.”