$1M NSF grant expands open source software mentorship program for HBCU students

When his professor first brought up an opportunity to learn about open source programming at UC Santa Cruz, Silas Morgan — like most undergraduate students — didn’t know much about open source. Two years as a participant and peer mentor at Contributor Catalyst, a UCSC-run program for students from HBCUs to learn about open source, have changed that.

“Most schools don’t really get into open source during undergraduate degrees,” said Morgan, an undergraduate student at Norfolk State University (NSU) and aspiring software developer. “It’s pretty new to me, but since I've gotten into it, I think it's really valuable for getting real world experience developing software and working with the actual workflow that you would use when you're in industry.” 

Over the past two summers, UC Santa Cruz has hosted small cohorts of students from NSU in Virginia for an eight week long program focused on gaining tangible experience with open source software contribution. Now, a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation will expand this program, enabling more students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to gain coding experience and receive intensive mentorship in this space.

“The program is specially designed to support HBCU students learning about open source and in becoming productive contributors and members of an open source community of their choice,” said Emily Lovell, a postdoctoral fellow at the UCSC Center for Research in Open Source Software who leads the Contributor Catalyst program. “I try to help them have as much information, resources, and support as possible to move forward on the path that they want to follow, whether that's grad school or the tech industry.” 

Contributor Catalyst

For the past two years, the Contributor Catalyst program has been run by the UC Santa Cruz Open Source Program Office (OSPO) with the support of the Baskin School of Engineering, which provided the program’s initial funding. Led by Lovell, the program is made possible in collaboration with OSPO Executive Director Stephanie Lieggi and NSU Associate Professor of Computer Science Thorna Humphries.

The program, held half in-person in Santa Cruz and half remote, has so far introduced small cohorts of NSU students to open source software programming and the collaborative communities around this technology. Open source software allows anyone to use, study, change, or contribute to the code, an alternative path to conventional programming, which is often proprietary. The program is free for the students, who receive a stipend for participating.

Students in the program choose an open source project to contribute to based on their interests. 

“I provide suggestions of communities that I know are really supportive, but the students really choose what their interest is — they do a full evaluation,” Lovell said. “We don’t work for a specific company or anything that's predetermined. That's the beauty of open source, there’s lots of projects that all need help, and then we pick where to put our time.”

During the first year of the program, the students contributed to a project called p5.js, which enables people to learn to code while making art. This year, the students were very interested in security, so the cohort focused on two different projects related to open source security. In both cases, the students made tangible contributions to these projects with code and documentation work.

“I learned a lot of things that they don't teach us in class,” said Kemon Bynum, an NSU student who participated in the program this year. “It definitely opened my eyes to a different world of tech, and let me know that this is something you can do for fun.” 

“In a final presentation this year, students spoke about coming away from the program with more independence, being able to problem solve and to go from feeling lost into being ‘productively lost’, as we like to call it,” Lovell said. 

Throughout their time working on these projects, the students meet people with various experiences working in the open source community who can offer guidance, support, and feedback in their learning. This was a particular area of focus for the program’s second year.

“This year we had more opportunities to reach out and see who would be willing to meet with us, and everyone said yes,” Morgan said. “I think in open source, people are more willing to share information, share their experience and give advice.”

Both years, the program has included a visit to a tech company’s office in San Francisco to introduce the students to the professional environment and provide insight into how the software developers use open source in their work. Last year’s cohort visited Docusign, and this year’s visited GitHub, a major company for open source software. Students are also invited to a fully-paid trip to an open source conference in the fall, providing further opportunities for learning and networking.

The students also get to know the natural beauty of California through outings, like this year’s trip to Big Sur. During their stay on campus, students live in dorms and are supported by staff on campus including Lenora Willis, Executive Director for African, Black, Caribbean Student Success.

Expanding the program

Starting next year, the nearly $1 million NSF grant will provide three years of guaranteed funding for the program and allow students from additional HBCUs to participate. 

Lovell plans to build the program in increments, being mindful of the need to build relationships and focus on the needs of students who have been historically marginalized in computing. Next year, the program will host four additional students from one other HBCU; the following year will add eight more students, and the third year will add eight more. Additional alumni mentors, like Morgan, will help support these cohorts as they grow.

“I'm really inspired by working with my students — it just feels like a privilege and an honor to get to be with them on this journey and see them out in real projects, successfully advocating for sometimes significant changes to open source projects,” Lovell said.

The grant proposal and ongoing projects are supported by Willis and her office as well as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Graduate Studies Lorato Anderson.