NSF Extends UA-Involved Alliance Encouraging African-Americans to Pursue Robotics, Computer Science

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The National Science Foundation has extended its support for an alliance of 19 historically black colleges and universities and nine major research universities, including The University of Alabama, encouraging African-American students to pursue graduate training and research careers in robotics and computer science.

The NSF’s two-year, $1.5 million extension award will enable the Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact, or ARTSI, Alliance to develop additional curricula and outreach activities, as well as continue a summer research program for undergraduates.

“This summer The University of Alabama will host  approximately 35 faculty from historically black colleges and universities and major research universities to work jointly on research initiatives and training materials for high school and college students,” said Dr. Monica Anderson, an assistant professor of computer science at UA. 

UA, under Anderson’s leadership, has hosted undergraduate students on its campus during each of the last three consecutive summers as part of the alliance’s summer research program.

The ARTSI Alliance, http://artsialliance.org/, was formed in 2007 with $2 million in NSF support to increase the number of African Americans among computer and information scientists. African Americans make up 13.5 percent of the U.S. population, but comprise only about 5 percent of U.S. computer and information scientists.

In its first three years of operation, ARTSI has served more than 300 undergraduates, provided mentoring and technical assistance to 23 HBCU faculty who established robotics courses and laboratories, and delivered more than 60 robots to HBCUs for teaching and research. It has funded 50 summer internship opportunities for HBCU students to work in labs at major research universities and held three faculty summer workshops.

ARTSI also launched robotics-based outreach activities to attract more middle and high school students to college-level computer science programs.

Chutima Boonthum-Denecke, assistant professor of computer science at Hampton University, is principal investigator for the ARTSI program, with David S. Touretzky, research professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, and Elva J. Jones, chairperson of the computer science department at Winston-Salem State University, serving as lead co-principal investigators.

ARTSI is part of the NSF’s Broadening Participation in Computing Program, which seeks to increase the number of women and minority students who pursue advanced training in computer science. The alliance also has received corporate support from Motorola, Google, Intel, Seagate Technology, Apple, Boeing and iRobot.

UA’s department of computer science is part of the University’s College of Engineering, one of the first five universities in the nation to offer engineering classes. Today, UA’s fully accredited College of Engineering has more than 2,700 students and more than 100 faculty. In the last eight years, students in the College have been named USA Today All-USA College Academic Team members, Goldwater scholars, Hollings scholars and Portz scholars.