The following is a special contribution to this blog by Jessica Cundiff, Research Analyst with CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP).  As part of the CERP team, she helps evaluate the effectiveness of programs aimed toward increasing gender and racial diversity in computing fields.

CRA’s Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline has published their Evaluation Report of the Computing Community Consortium’s (CCC) Computing Innovation (CI) Fellowship Program. The CI Fellows Program was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and implemented by CCC to provide recent computing PhDs with a valuable postdoctoral opportunity that would foster long-term success as computing researchers, during the economic downturn.

To provide comparative evaluation of the CI Fellows program, CERP compared the experiences and outcomes of CI Fellows to those who had pursued Non-fellow Postdocs. Findings suggest that CI Fellows had more positive postdoc experiences and, at the time of the survey, were earning higher salaries compared to Non-fellow Postdocs. Notably, these differences in outcomes emerged even after accounting for baseline differences in merit between the two groups.

In addition to providing comparative evaluation, results also provide insight into the strengths and weaknesses of computing postdoc programs as a whole. Although postdoc programs were rated positively on providing support and preparation for a research career, results suggest that postdoc programs could be improved upon by providing accommodations for moving expenses and personal and family responsibilities.

For the complete report, please visit http://cra.org/cerp/reports.