The CSTA Board’s Equity Committee is, no surprise, concerned with issues around equity of opportunity, support and encouragement for all students in computer science education and careers. We are especially concerned with supporting women and underserved minorities. Diversity is critically important in society and computer science is no exception.

For the past several years a major effort of the Equity committee has been “We are the Faces of Computing” competitions (http://csta.acm.org/Advocacy_Outreach/Other/FOC.html ). The purpose of these competitions is twofold. First is to get students thinking about diversity in computing and its importance. Secondly, and even more importantly, we want students to create artifacts that can be used to help more students see themselves in the field of computing. A collection of winning posters from several years is available at the Faces of Computing web page. For 2014 the Equity committee ran a competition to create videos. The winners were announced during CS Education Week and can be found at the CSTA web site. (http://csta.acm.org/Advocacy_Outreach/sub/CSEdWeek.html)

Throughout the year, the Equity committee works to make sure that all CSTA programs help to support the CSTA goals of equal opportunity and broadening the participation in computing to all segments of the population.

These tasks are of course everyone’s job but having specific members of the board with a particular focus on Equity is an important responsibility that helps the Association keep sight of the goal.

Alfred Thompson, Equity Committee Chair and At-large member, CSTA Board