Many papers surrounding broadening participation in computer science education are concerned with race and gender disparity gaps, with an increasing number of works interested in intersectionality and identities related to disabilities. Although these identity factors are important to understanding disparities in computer science education, little work has been done to explore the role socioeconomic status plays in a computing student’s academic career. Socioeconomic status (SES) provides a more direct lens for understanding disparities in access to educational resources, opportunities, and support systems. The goal of my dissertation is to understand and identify the most important socioeconomic factors related to computer science student performance. Specifically, I would like to explore this from the perspective of college-level computer science students. In sharing these indicators with the greater community, I hope to encourage researchers to look at students through a socioeconomic lens in addition to race, gender, and other identity categories.

I am currently a third-year Ph.D. student studying Computer Science Education topics, under Dr. Sara Hooshangi. I completed my Honours Bachelors in Computer Science (HBSc) at the University of Toronto Mississauga in Spring 2022.

My research is in broadening participation of computing education, with specific regards to how socioeconomic status (SES) impacts a student’s enrollment, performance, retention, and self-efficacy in computing. I am also interested in exploring intersectional disparity gaps in computing. I previously published “The Impact of High School Region Socioeconomic Status on Computer Science Student Performance”, where I estimate SES using a student’s high school area to understand performance gaps in CS1. Future dissertation work will consist of quantative student record analysis, student surveys on SES, then qualitative studies to better understand the trends we are seeing in the population.