The Information Science Colloquium speaker for Wednesday, November 29, 2017, will be Juan Gilbert, the Andrew Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Professor and Chair of the Computer & Information Science & Engineering Department at the University of Florida, where he leads the Human-Experience Research Lab. His research areas include database, data science and informatics, human-centered computing, information security and machine learning.

Talk: Broadening Participation in Computing: Breaking Down Barriers and Increasing Access

Abstract: The University of Florida has the nation’s largest group of Black/African-American tenured/tenure-track faculty in computing sciences in the nation. UF also has the most female tenured/tenure-track faculty in computing. Lastly, UF has the nation’s largest group of Black/African-American computing sciences PhD students. How did the University of Florida accomplish such diversity in one of the least diverse STEM disciplines? Who are these faculty and students? In this talk, Dr. Juan Gilbert will describe how UF achieved this unprecedented diversity in a field known for its lack of diversity. He will discuss the recruiting, retention and mentoring models used to reach these levels of diversity.