The LEAP Alliance is an NSF-funded Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance focused on diversifying future leadership in the computing professoriate at research universities as a way to increase diversity across the field of computing. The problem we address is stark and straightforward: a very small percentage of the faculty (tenured, tenure-track, teaching, research, instructors) at PhD-granting universities are from the following underrepresented communities: Black or African-American, Hispanic, or American Indian or Alaska Native (CRA Taulbee Report).
Our solution is equally stark and straightforward: we intentionally bring together four cohorts of universities, with each cohort having common strengths and a common agenda to diversity future leadership in the computing professoriate. The four cohorts provide a comprehensive solution that covers undergraduate students and graduate students.
The LEAP Alliance is focused on four communities that are historically underrepresented in computing:
- African Americans
- Hispanics
- Native Americans/Indigenous Americans
- People with Disabilities
The shared purposed and broad vision of the LEAP Alliance is to increase faculty diversity in computing by three main approaches:
- Increase the diversity of PhD graduates from institutions that are the top producers of computing faculty (based upon data from Jeff Huang) – Cohort 1 and Cohort 2
- Increase the exposure of academic careers at institutions that already have good diversity in their PhD graduates (based upon IPEDS data) – Cohort 3
- Increase the retention of diverse undergraduate students at the institutions that send students to graduate school that go on to be faculty (based upon data from Jeff Huang) – Cohort 4
LEAP Alliance Cohorts
Cohort 1 • Carnegie Mellon University • Cornell University • Georgia Tech • Harvard University • Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Princeton University • Stanford University • University of California, Berkeley • University of Texas • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign • University of Washington | Cohort 2 • California Institute of Technology • Columbia University • Purdue University • University of California, Los Angeles • University of Maryland • University of Michigan • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • University of Pennsylvania • University of Southern California • University of Wisconsin-Madison • Yale University |
Cohort 3 • Syracuse University • Tennessee State University • Texas A&M University • University of California, Davis • University of California, Santa Cruz • University of Colorado Boulder • University of North Texas | Cohort 4 • Carnegie Mellon University • Cornell University • Georgia Tech • Harvard University • Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Princeton University • Stanford University • University of California, Berkeley • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign • University of Washington |
The LEAP Alliance was launched with only Cohort 1 with funding from an NSF INCLUDES demonstration grant, HRD-1806229 (2017-2020) and a grant from the Sloan Foundation (2019 – 2022). The LEAP Alliance is led by Valerie Taylor (University of Chicago) and Charles Isbell (Georgia Tech). Stafford Hood and Denice Hood (UIUC-CREA) oversee the evaluation. The LEAP Alliance also received funding from Google (2020-2022) for dissertation fellowships.
For questions regarding the LEAP Alliance, please send us a message by selecting “LEAP Alliance” for the subject on our contact us page.