The Computing Research Association Inc.

“The 990 is prepared with the information from the audited financial statements and other information provided by the client. The outsourced accounting firm reviews the 990, the executive director reviews the 990,and then the draft is presented to the finance committee for its review and approval.”

“Each board member is required to sign a statement annually stating that he or she has no conflicts.”

“The executive committee decides on the compensation of the executive director based on his contract and annual evaluations of his performance. Compensation level is based on the criteria for the job, the size of the organization and market conditions in the washington, dc area.”

“The organization's governing documents, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements are available to the public upon request.”

“Sustainable diversity in the computing research pipeline - the goal of the cra-w/cdc alliance is to increase the number of women and underrepresented minorities who particpate and succeed in computer science research at every state of the research pipeline. Achieving these objectives requires that an increasing number of underrepresented minorities and women (urm+w) start and progress to the next stage. The failure to capitalize on the creativity of the urm+w researchers represents a huge opportunity cost to the u.s. Economy and national security to grow our nation's leadership in technical innovation. The alliance offers programs for participants from undergraduate to senior professional levels. Different career stages need different types of interventions, and the goal of all alliance program activities can be described within the unifying framework of social cognitive career theory, which finds that interest in and choice of a particular career path will be increased by interventions that improve one or more of the following: (1) outcome expectations (understanding and valuing the rewards of a particular outcome), (2) self-efficacy (a belief that one can successfully achieve an outcome), and (3) social supports that help one persist and overcome obstacles. Specifically, alliance programs aim to make participants aware of the rewards of a research career and the value of a phd: to help participants develop self-efficacy through increased knowledge, skills, and confidence; and to connect participants to the research community and to each other to further their success. Funding is requested to (1) partially support urm+w participants in estabished and enhanced alliance programs and (2) establish the cra center for evaluating the research pipeline. The alliance programs in this proposal target increasing the numbers and success of under-represented minorities and women from undergraduate to early career researchers. Intellectual merit: the cra center for evaluating the research pipeline (cerp) will be the first ever, longitudinal and national study of the factors that lead to research careers for all undergraduate and graduate students in computing; in particular, cerp will evaluate whether the alliance intervention programs are effective at increasing participation and success of urm+w in computing. The preliminary results from a one year pilot study shows that alliance programs are effective at increasing progression toward research careers; however, due to the small numbers of urm+w participants, additional longitudinal data, analysis, and evaluation are necessary to capture longitudinal trends and provide rich enough data and sufficient statistical accuracy for many questions, such as: *what experiences and expectations contribute to students' decisions to enter the "research track and continue through graduate school into an academic or research job in the computing fields? What contributes to their success? What contributing factors, if any, are different for urm+w? *to what extent do alliance progams influence urm+w students to choose and remain on the "research track" (go to graduate school, etc.) compared to similar nonparticipants? *what characteristics of alliance programs create positive effect? *what happens to alliance participants and non-participants long-term? Broader impact: alliance goals include growing the urm+w research community and positively impacting the career development of individual urm+w researchers. These impacts include institutional change in response to the alliance's sustainability efforts and resources for the national bpc community and for the nation in general for similar programs to encourage computing research among the population in general-a critical national need if the us is going to maintain or grow its economic and military position. The evaluation efforts of the cra center for evaluating the research pipeline will yield a national comparison database that will become a powerful na”