Category: Uncategorized

Dr. Kinnis Gosha  Director of the Culturally Relevant Computing  lab spoke at the University of Georgia Tech’s Graphic Visualization Usability (GVU)  Center’s Brown Bag Seminar. The discussion was on the topic of ways to broaden participation in computing.  Dr. Gosha introduced the concept of how conversational agents such as Siri and Alexa are already doing this in everyday households. However, these agents also provide a unique opportunity to provide mentoring and advisement to individuals in ways that cannot be accomplished by traditional human-to-human interactions. His presentation  provided details on multiple projects (in progress and completed) that leverage various types of conversational agents to address issues in the area of broadening participation in computing.

The Computer Science Department’s Culturally Relevant Computing Lab (CRCL)  announces the new addition to the CRCL research team, Dr. Aris Hall. Dr. Hall will be serving as a Postdoctoral Researcher, where she will assist with the Excellence in Research (EIR) Grant.  In addition to the EIR grant, Dr. Hall will work on research that focuses on HBCU students. Specifically, the two projects will focus on Black students interning in Silicon Valley and students in the Atlanta University Center who are fighting injustices through social media.

Dr. Hall has an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration from Kentucky State University. She received a Master of Education degree with a focus in College Student Personnel from Clemson University. Aris also holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in Higher Education. The foundation of her higher education career started as a National Association of Student Personnel Administrators Undergraduate Fellow and as a practitioner in Student Affairs and Higher Education.

Morehouse College is proud to announce and welcome Jennifer I. Baker as the new Project Manager for the Culturally Relevant Computing Lab (CRCL) in the Computer Science Department. Ms. Baker is responsible for making sure multiple programs and projects are completed on time and within budget, implementing a growth strategy for national recognition, and preparing grant proposals and reports.

Jennifer joins the CRCL team with a  Master of Business Administration with an emphasis in Nonprofit Arts Management from Oklahoma City University, and a Master of Arts with a major in Technical Communication from Texas State University.  Jennifer holds certifications in marketing, nonprofit management, and project management. Ms. Baker’s education and skills prepared her well for 30 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, and nonprofit management. She has held executive-level roles in the arts, digital publishing, education, financial services, and real estate.

Members of the CRCL had four papers accepted for publication for the 2018 ACM SIGMIS Computers and People Research 2018 Conference in Buffalo, New York. The four papers consist of the following: "Computing Careers Exploration For Urban African American Students using Embodied Conversational Agents", "The Effects of Anxiety and Preparation on Performance in Technical Interviews for HBCU Computer Science Majors", " The Classification of Aggressive Dialogue in Social Media Platforms" and "Using SMS as an Interface for a Virtual Mentoring System".

The Culturally Relevant Computing Lab has been awarded a contract by Clarkson Aerospace, LLC to conduct research in the area of cybersecurity. The research will be conducted primarily by members of Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University Navy ROTC. The contract is set at $157,000 and runs for nine months. The research to be conducted will be in the area of social media data analysis and mining.

The Culturally Relevant Computing Lab welcomes Ms. Shondrieka Lamb as the new Assistant Director. Ms. Lamb has worked at Morehouse College for the past 6 years, and brings a wealth of experience that will be of great benefit to the growth of the lab. She is passionate about student growth, and has continued her education in Educational Psychology to be of better understand student development, and has stated that she is eager to assist students reach their career goals in Computer Science.

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) through the Targeted Infusion Project supports the development, implementation, and study of evidence-based innovative models and approaches for improving the preparation and success of HBCU undergraduate students. In doing so students are able to pursue science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) graduate programs and/or careers (Award #1623362). The project at Spelman College and Morehouse College seeks to address the need for skilled data scientists through data science and big data training for faculty and students at both colleges in partnership with the College of Charleston's Data Science program. The activities and strategies are evidence-based and a strong plan for formative and summative evaluation is part of the project.

The project has specific goals to:

• Train faculty on data science principles that are part of computing fundamentals and infuse the existing curriculum to showcase the data science principles.
• Develop and implement a data science curriculum at the undergraduate level at both institutions.
• Broaden awareness of data science to students underrepresented in the discipline at the undergraduate level in preparation of graduate studies or corporate positions in data science.

Two groups of ten faculty members will be trained in data science principles, and these faculty will create, infuse and deliver data science modules to about 500 of their students.