Contributor Catalyst: A Pilot Program to Support HBCU Undergraduates Contributing to Open Source
Emily Lovell, Thorna Humphries, Stephanie Lieggi · 2024
This Innovative Practice Work in Progress paper reports on a pilot program to support HBCU undergraduates in learning about open source software contribution. Offered in the Summer of 2023, this program was called Contributor Catalyst. This program was designed to support students who had completed foundational computing coursework (i.e. intro-ductory programming, data structures), but were still evaluating future education and career pathways. We served four HBCU undergraduates from the same institution in our pilot year. The program offered mentorship, instruction, and community-building through a hybrid-modality cohort model, in which students spent one week learning remotely, four weeks together in-person on an Rl residential campus, and then three more weeks collaborating remotely. Roughly the first half of the program was spent learning about open source tools, practices, and norms; the second half was spent contributing to p5js, a real world project which the students chose from a vetted list of options. Community-building events were highlighted during the in-person portion of the program, for example: welcome and departure dinners, regional excursions, and participating in a Black Lives Matter garden workday. Students also participated in professional development such as attending an academic research conference and visiting a tech company. Student learning was scaffolded by workshop-style instruction and was further supported by a layered community of practice. This community of practice included peer support from within the cohort, program support from their instructor, and project support from p5js community members. Students also had many opportunities to engage with guests including project maintainers, faculty members, and industry professionals, all working in the realm of open source. This paper offers an early report on our experiences and suggests how the program might evolve and grow in future years. In particular, we hope to build partnerships with additional HB-CUs, document and share our program resources, and evaluate programmatic goals.