ACM Teach LA

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in 2019-2020

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 10:21:42 +0000

Overview and Table of Contents

ACM Teach LA is an organization dedicated to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). This brief report is the first of its kind, reflecting on Teach LA’s progress within the scope of EDI, and our next steps moving forward.

Overview and Table of Contents
Socioeconomic Barriers and Access to Education
Bilingualism
- Next Steps
Speaker Series
- Next Steps
EDI in Curriculum
- Next Steps
Internal EDI
- Next Steps
Closing Thoughts

Socioeconomic Barriers and Access to Education

The core of Teach LA’s mission is to improve access to education. We primarily collaborate with Title I schools, where a majority of students are from low-income families. Within these schools, we strive to serve low-income and underrepresented students who would not otherwise have accessible resources for computer science education. We recognize the value in reaching out to individuals at a young age: inspiring their passion for technology early on allows them more time to explore their interests and build their self-confidence in their ability to use computers.

Our most mature program consists of supplemental or extracurricular computer science classes, led by our student instructors. They instill the values of confidence, creativity, having fun, and inclusion into our students to offset the detrimental impacts of socioeconomic barriers and underrepresentation. We have created a strong foundational CS curriculum that tailors to each students individual needs, regardless of their previous experience with technology. By creating a low teacher-to-student ratio, we ensure that every student has the attention they need so they can learn in a collaborative environment.

Teach LA has also pursued other avenues to make computer science education more accessible. Our internal dev team has continued to maintain our online code editor, which mitigates an obstacle for students who do not have consistent access to computers at home, and lowers the barrier of installing libraries and interacting with code.

Bilingualism

We recognize that English is not a first language for many of our students or parents. At Brockton Elementary School, we provide information about our program to students’ in English and Spanish: this ensures that parents clearly understand what Teach LA does, and the impact that early computer science education has on their child.

Next Steps

In the upcoming school year, we plan on continuing to distribute program resources in English and Spanish, whenever relevant. In addition, we reaffirm our commitment to creating language-accessible resources, which includes active discussions with students, teachers, and parents on what language best suits them.

Our internal development team is in the process of creating Spanish-language pages on our website, with the goal of providing more information to our Spanish-speaking students, parents, and educators. We aim to create all relevant web pages before the beginning of our academic year.

Speaker Series

While our primary program involves year-long computer science classes, this is not always logistically possible. Another way in which we connect with students at schools at which we do not physically teach is by hosting one-off external speaker series events at these schools. In these speaker series, Teach LA instructors physically (or digital) visit these schools, introduce themselves, and engage in discussions with students on what computer science is, college life, and anything else that interests them. In contrast to our classes, speaker series events are less technical, and more focused on inspiring students to explore their interests in CS and pursue CS in whatever capacity possible.

On the other hand, internal speaker series are events at UCLA in which we bring students to campus and allow them to participate in cool CS activities, demos, and workshops, and experience the life of a UCLA student! We hope this makes them excited to be a CS student in college, and grants them exposure to the environment. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we were unable to have any internal speaker series events this year.

Next Steps

In the upcoming year, we would like to organize more EDI-focused and non-technical external speaker series events, utilizing the unique nature of the speaker series (opposed to regular classes) to touch on otherwise infrequent topics.

In addition, we would like to expand the set of schools that we perform speaker series at, ensuring that we reach students from a broad set of backgrounds. Given the likely digital nature of our outreach, we can look to provide speaker series at schools where transportation or geography was previously a barrier.

EDI in Curriculum

We believe that equity, diversity, and inclusion should also underpin elements of our existing curriculum. At Brockton Elementary school, we have led discussions on the importance of diversity when building products that everybody uses. In past speaker series events, we have engaged in group discussions about representation and inclusion, especially through the lens of technology.

In our collaboration with ACM AI Outreach at North Hollywood High School, we have ensured that EDI is especially emphasized in our curriculum. We have frequently mentioned the ethical implications and problems of AI techniques that we teach to students. ACM AI Outreach also kickstarted the “You Belong in AI!” podcast, which interviews exemplary role models in AI to inspire students of all backgrounds to pursue AI opportunities, and to discuss AI ethics issues in depth.

Next Steps

In general, we plan on continuing to actively integrate EDI into our curriculum. Following the lead from Brockton Elementary and North Hollywood High, we plan on creating more lesson plans centred on EDI and how it relates to our students. As previously mentioned, we believe that EDI-focused speaker series are another important program that we plan to expand.

Our collaboration with ACM AI Outreach continues to link AI and ethics to EDI. Next year, we plan on producing a video series that explores AI on a conceptual level. Without delving into the math, the series would explore AI through the context of fairness, bias, and ethics, and the role it plays into society. We intend to make this AI education as accessible as possible, so it can reach underserved and underrepresented students: the very same students who are most susceptible to being adversely affected by bias in AI systems (e.g. facial recognition technology). We want to empower these students with a solid understanding of fairness and bias in AI so that they can call out societal injustices in AI, and look to fix them themselves.

Internal EDI

EDI is a set of principles that extend beyond our classroom: it’s equally as important, if not more important, in how we run our organization.

We try to emphasize diversity and inclusion through many lenses, most obviously through recruiting and member makeup. We strongly believe that students learning from and working with successful UCLA students who represent their identity and interests makes them more likely to pursue CS in the future. To accurately represent diversity of interest, we focus on including and showcasing non-CS majors in our club: our major pool includes applied math, cognitive science, electrical engineering, statistics, linguistics, civil engineering, bioengineering, and film. In our 2019-2020 board, every single member had a unique major/minor combination.

In our recruitment process, we emphasize that prior experience in the field is not required, and that we champion EDI in our organization. We believe this lowers the barrier of entry to our organization, and creates a welcoming and inclusive culture. In retrospect, we are particularly proud of our well-balanced gender ratio, our steps towards making Teach LA welcoming for LGBTQIA members, and our beginner-friendly dev team.

Internally, we emphasize the importance of EDI in our meetings: through discussion about current events, integrating accessibility into our curriculum, and in ACM-wide discussions such as our All Hands. We frequently co-sponsor and partner with EDI-focused organizations, such as ACM-W, the Society of Women Engineers, and QWERHacks.

Next Steps

Although we already have an incredible group of instructors from many different backgrounds, we plan to actively work towards furthering the diversity of our team this coming school year by recruiting more BIPOC and non-CS majors, as well as neurodiverse and gender diverse individuals. Members of these groups have been historically under-represented in the technology field and otherwise made to believe that a career in computer science is an unattainable goal. By pivoting our recruiting efforts towards our peers in introductory and non-major computer science courses, we hope to make computer science more accessible to all!

In addition, we would like to collaborate more with non-CS and non-engineering organisations. We believe that technology literacy and computer science are useful skills for all children (and really, for everyone) - not just those who participate in STEM classes or afterschool programs. Collaboration would not only diversify the groups of students that we teach, but also the types of conversations and ideas that we have internally within our club.

Finally, we want to further emphasize EDI through our organization. Initiatives like this report are the first step, but there are many more: EDI-focused pedagogy sessions, active reflections and discussions within our organization, and looking for avenues for social advocacy are all reasonable next steps that we can take.

Closing Thoughts

In general, we are proud of the values that underpin ACM Teach LA, and the fact that Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are core to the identity of our organization. We believe that we have taken active steps to ensure that EDI is upheld in everything that our club does. We have outlined how EDI exists in everything we do: our outreach, curriculum, and internal operations. We strive to continue this level of awareness and action in our future.

At the same time, we understand that there is always room to improve. As we have outlined in this document, there are actionable steps that we can take to further improve EDI in all of our actions. We believe that publishing this report is the first step, but accountability cannot stop there - we will continue to reflect, identify, and iterate on our strengths and weaknesses with regard to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

We also value input from our community at large. If you would like to contact us about the content of this report, we’d love to hear what you have to say: send us an email at acmteachla@gmail.com.

Financial Accountability in 2019-2020

Sophie Schoenmeyer and Matthew Wang and the Teach LA community — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 10:21:42 +0000

This report summarizes ACM Teach LA’s finances for the 2019-2020 academic year. The focus of this report is on documenting the committee’s use of its resources to further its mission statement: the provision of equitable K-12 computer science education in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents
Key Points
General Summary
- COVID-19
Expense Breakdowns
Funding Sources
Raw Data
Conclusion

Key Points

The majority of 2019-2020 Teach LA expenses were directly related to outreach.
Teach LA’s primary sources of funding during the 2019-2020 academic year were the UCLA Computer Science Department and the USAC Community service Mini Fund.
During the Fall and Winter quarters, transportation to and from schools comprised the majority of the Teach LA budget.
No costs were incurred during Spring Quarter due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent switch to virtual instruction.
Teach LA maintained a positive budget balance in the 2019-2020 school year, but the net difference in CS Department funding will be applied to the 2020-2021 budget due to policy changes as a result of COVID-19.

General Summary

Throughout the 2019-2020 school year, Teach LA continued to provide supplementary computer science classes, even when faced with unforeseen obstacles due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Fall and Winter quarters, ACM Teach LA taught four weekly classes:

CS Unplugged at Brockton Elementary School
Intro to Python at Emerson Middle School
Intro to Python at Sepulveda Middle School
Intro to AI & ML at North Hollywood High School (in collaboration with ACM AI Outreach)

In the Fall and Winter quarters, transportation to these schools comprised 92% of our budget.

In addition, Teach LA continued offering one-off speaker series events and expanded the dev team.

In the 2019-2020 school year, Teach LA maintained a positive budget balance. Teach LA received funding from the UCLA CS Department (faciliated through ACM @ UCLA as a whole) and from the USAC CS Mini Fund, with a total potential inflow of $2,472.43. In total, Teach LA expensed $1470.72, with 92% ($1,350.19) being directly related to outreach.

Due to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 outbreak, the UCLA Computer Science Department instituted a “roll-over” policy for outstanding organization balances. As such, the net difference in Teach LA’s CS Department funding of $429.48 is applied to Teach LA’s 2020-2021 budget.

COVID-19

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, ACM Teach LA shifted as much of its instruction to virtual spaces as possible. For the Spring Quarter, ACM Teach LA continued with reduced instruction for North Hollywood, and shifted to speaker series for Emerson; due to technical difficulties, Teach LA was unable to continue teaching Brockton and Emerson students.

Importantly, Teach LA did not have any costs associated with Spring Quarter due to the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent virtual instruction (for both UCLA students and our LAUSD partner schools). As Teach LA conducted all events over Zoom, no transportation expenses were incurred.

Expense Breakdowns

School-by-School

Sepulveda Middle School - $ 584.42
North Hollywood High School - $ 576.27
Brockton Elementary School - $ 153.48
Emerson Middle School - $ 86.82
Mark Twain Middle School - $ 37.47

Quarter-by-Quarter

Winter - $ 832.57
Fall - $ 638.15
Spring - $ 0

Transportation vs Non-transportation

Transportation - $ 1,350.19
Non-Transportation - $ 120.53

Funding Sources

UCLA Computer Science Department

In the 2019-2020 school year, Teach LA received funding from the CS Department, a process facilitated through ACM @ UCLA as a whole. The majority of this donation was utilized for outreach purposes.

During each of the Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters, Teach LA received a $450 allocation from the CS Department. The amount of funding received from the CS Department over the course of the 2019-2020 academic year thus totaled $1,350.

Due to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 outbreak, the CS Department instituted a “roll-over” policy for outstanding organization balances. Given that Teach LA did not incur any expenses during Spring Quarter as a result of the switch to virtual instruction during the COVID-19 outbreak, the net difference of CS Department funding ($429.48) will be applied to the organization’s 2020-2021 balance.

USAC Community Service Mini Fund

Teach LA also received funding from the CS Mini Fund during the 2019-2020 school year.

The CS Mini Fund is often used as a supplemental funding source for outreach organizations and typically covers costs associated with transportation, food, additional supplies, and more.

During Fall and Winter quarters respectively, Teach LA received $828.98 and $293.45 allocations from the CS Mini Fund. The total value of grants received from the CS Mini Fund during the 2019-2020 academic year was thus $1,122.43.

All club expenses that were budgeted to the CS Mini Fund were directly used for outreach (via transportation).

Raw Data

Download the data here.

Open the table (click/tap here)

Date	Event	Type	Qty.	Item	Unit Cost	Total Cost	Funding Source	Special Notes
10/3/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	2	$36.33	$36.33	CS Dept
10/7/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.77	$25.77	CS Mini Fund
10/7/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$26.96	$26.96	CS Mini Fund
10/10/19	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	1	$36.76	$36.76	CS Dept
10/22/19	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Lyft	1	$9.32	$9.32	CS Mini Fund
10/24/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$22.31	$22.31	CS Dept
10/24/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$19.99	$19.99	CS Mini Fund
10/24/19	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$71.07	$71.07	CS Dept
10/24/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$19.99	$19.99	CS Mini Fund
10/28/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$12.49	$12.49	CS Mini Fund
10/28/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.50	$25.50	CS Mini Fund
10/28/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.45	$25.45	CS Mini Fund
10/28/19	Mark Twain Middle School	Transportation	Uber	1	$12.49	$12.49	CS Mini Fund
10/30/19	Sepulveda Middle School	Prizes	Prizes	1	$21.25	$21.25	CS Mini Fund
10/30/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.45	$25.45	CS Mini Fund
10/30/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.50	$25.50	CS Mini Fund
11/5/19	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Uber	1	$14.92	$14.92	CS Mini Fund
11/7/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$16.57	$16.57	CS Mini Fund
11/7/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$14.26	$14.26	CS Mini Fund
11/12/19	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Uber	1	$7.99	$7.99	CS Mini Fund
11/12/19	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Uber	1	$11.01	$11.01	CS Mini Fund
11/14/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$13.96	$13.96	CS Mini Fund
11/14/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$19.74	$19.74	CS Mini Fund
11/19/19	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Uber	1	$9.44	$9.44	CS Mini Fund
11/20/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.27	$25.27	CS Mini Fund
11/20/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$26.73	$26.73	CS Mini Fund
11/28/19	Mark Twain Middle School	Transportation	Uber	2	$24.98	$24.98	CS Dept	Missing justification
11/28/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$19.99	$19.99	CS Dept	Missing justification
12/9/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.75	$25.75	CS Mini Fund
12/9/19	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Uber	1	$25.24	$25.24	CS Mini Fund
1/27/20	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$40.38	$40.38	CS Dept
1/27/20	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$26.29	$26.29	CS Dept
2/4/20	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$15.32	$15.32	CS Dept
2/4/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$45.80	$45.80	CS Dept
2/4/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$45.80	$45.80	CS Dept	Duplicate entry filed,likely mistake
2/4/20	Emerson Middle School	Transportation	Uber	2	$14.77	$14.77	CS Dept
2/11/20	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$27.72	$27.72	CS Dept
2/11/20	Emerson Middle School	Transportation	Uber	2	$10.92	$10.92	CS Dept
2/12/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	1	$25.25	$25.25	CS Dept
2/12/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$46.22	$46.22	CS Dept
2/18/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	1	$21.84	$21.84	CS Dept
2/18/20	Brockton Elementary School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$31.47	$31.47	CS Dept
2/18/20	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$41.88	$41.88	CS Dept
2/27/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$58.01	$58.01	CS Dept
2/27/20	Emerson Middle School	Transportation	Uber	2	$14.32	$14.32	CS Dept
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Uber	1	$24.09	$24.09	CS Dept
3/24/20	North Hollywood High School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$40.76	$40.76	CS Dept
3/24/20	Emerson Middle School	Transportation	Uber	2	$19.67	$19.67	CS Dept
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$56.80	$56.80	CS Dept
3/24/20	Emerson Middle School	Transportation	Uber	2	$15.60	$15.60	CS Dept
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Prizes	Candy	2	$18.04	$18.04	CS Dept
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Prizes	Candy	1	$14.65	$14.65	CS Dept
3/24/20	Emerson Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$11.54	$11.54	CS Dept
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	1	$25.35	$25.35	CS Dept
3/24/20	Teach LA Social	Social	Ice Blocks	3	$3.99	$13.11	CS Dept
3/24/20	Teach LA Social	Social	Snacks	1	$53.48	$53.48	CS Dept
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	2	$47.18	$47.18	N/A	Not reimbursed,past-deadline
3/24/20	Sepulveda Middle School	Transportation	Lyft	1	$26.31	$26.31	N/A	Not reimbursed,past-deadline

Conclusion

This concludes all publishable details about ACM Teach LA’s financials. If there are any questions or concerns about the data provided, we respond to emails at acmteachla@gmail.com.

We plan on continuing this trend of financial transparency in the 2020-2021 academic year, even as the majority of our activities remain online. We are committed to transparency as a core tenet of our organization.

'20-21 Intern Application Cycle Stats

Matthew Wang and the Teach LA community — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 10:21:42 +0000

It’s the end of Week 4 in Winter Quarter, and our interns are working hard away at their projects! We also want to make transparent the statistics that ACM at UCLA gathered about our intern application process, and how they compare to our specific committee specifics.

Statistics: Teach LA

This year Teach LA had 71 total applications for our interns. While we did not ask for gender identity, we did ask for pronouns; here is the breakdown:

50.70% have pronouns he/him/his
43.66% have pronouns she/her/hers
1.41% have pronouns they/them/theirs
4.23% prefer not to disclose

Our of our 71 total applicants, we had just one transfer (1.41%). This is an area of improvement that we are actively investigating.

Here is the split of our applicants by graduation year:

2.82% are graduating in 2021
9.86% are graduating in 2022
33.80% are graduating in 2023
53.52% are graduating in 2024

Statistics: ACM at UCLA

We can compare this to statistics for ACM’s entire internship program. There were 255 total unique applications for intern positions (one application can include other committees).

Breaking down the three collected statistics:

60.39% have pronouns he/him/his
34.12% have pronouns she/her/hers
1.57% have pronouns they/them/theirs
3.92% prefer not to disclose

7.06% of our applicants were transfer students.

Here is the split of our applicants by graduation year:

3.92% are graduating in 2021
18.43% are graduating in 2022
35.29% are graduating in 2023
41.96% are graduating in 2024

Remarks and Closing Thoughts

We took these statistics into account to identify weak points in our recruiting and application pipeline. In particular, we had very little transfer student engagement. Taking this into account, we’ve started to increase communication with UCLA’s Transfer Center, and are looking into more ways to actively support and include the transfer student community.

Both Teach LA and ACM as a whole have more equitable gender splits than the UCLA Computer Science program as a whole, which tends to average 20-25% female over the past five years (see the UCEE reports for more information).

Our committee skews harder towards first and second-years than the rest of ACM, and the student body in general. Generally, intern positions tend to skew for first and second-years, so this overall pattern is expected.

We are committed to making our internship application process - and more broadly, our club - as transparent and inclusive as possible. We plan to continue to survey aggregate statistics surrounding our organization, and use these to identify weaknesses in our organizational structure and plan.

If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to discuss this data, please feel free to reach out! Our organization is generally available via email at acmteachla@gmail.com, and our individual officers can be contacted via the team page.

Note: this report was edited on 02/12/2021 to resolve minor grammatical errors.