Underrepresented groups in gender and STEM: The case of black males in CISE

The underrepresentation of Black males in the Information Technology and Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is a problem in academia and our society. Diversity and learning go hand in hand. People of different cultural, ethnic, religious, and societal backgrounds bring their various experiences with them when they come into a classroom. The more diverse the student, teacher and professor make-up, the more perspectives they can share about any given principle or concept. Therefore, heterogeneous classrooms contribute to diversity. Having a more ethnically diverse IT field can help with the recruitment and retention of minority undergraduate students through role modeling and mentoring. The findings from this research will add to the growing body of knowledge about interventions to address underrepresentation of certain populations in the IT field. But the particular contribution is that the focus is on minority males. Researching this topic at the undergraduate level would be a starting point, but future research would allow me to study graduate students and faculty in academia to further understand underrepresentation throughout the entire academic pipeline in IT.