Hopper-Dean Foundation Collaboration
In 2016, the Hopper-Dean Foundation provided three years of funding to five leading computer science programs – UW, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and CMU – to increase their efforts towards diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Each institution had a different focus. The Allen School’s proposal stated:
UW CSE is widely recognized as a leader in promoting gender diversity in the field of computing – consistently outpacing our peers in the recruitment and retention of women. Your request for proposals and subsequent conversations have challenged us to broaden our focus, dramatically increasing the attention we devote to other groups that are underrepresented in the field: URMs and low-income students. This proposal presents new efforts, inspired by your challenge – efforts that span the educational pipeline, from K-12 outreach to college academic support and career preparation.
In 2019, the Hopper-Dean Foundation made three major changes to the initiative:
- UW, Berkeley, MIT, and CMU were funded for a second three-year period.
- Cornell, Georgia Tech, and Howard University were added to the group.
- Station1 was brought on board to coordinate, transitioning from five independent efforts to seven institutions integrated in a tight collaboration – the Hopper-Dean Foundation Collaboration (HDFC).
The Allen School’s focus under HDFC remains the same: to dramatically increase the attention we devote to traditionally underrepresented and low-income students in our undergraduate program. The collaboration, however, has made the effort dramatically more powerful.
The HDFC leads at the Allen School are Chloe Dolese Mandeville and Ed Lazowska, with substantial support from Jan Cuny and Dan Grossman.
The leads for Station1 and all seven institutions may be viewed here. The first year report of the Allen School’s HDFC activities may be viewed here.