Ross, Monique

Biography

Monique Ross, Associate Professor in the Engineering Education Department at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on broadening participation in computing by exploring: 1) race, gender, and identity in the academy and industry; and 2) discipline-based education research to inform pedagogical practices that garner interest and retain women and marginalized populations in computer-related engineering fields.  She earned a doctoral degree in Engineering Education from Purdue University, M.S. in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Auburn University, and B.S. in Computer Engineering from Elizabethtown College. Before joining OSU she was a tenured professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University. 

Expertise

Race, gender, and computing as it relates to broadening participation in computing. 

Over the last seven years, our work has been centered on the need to raise the profile of computer science education research in computer science and engineering education with the objective of Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC). The results of our work have put a spotlight on the dearth of literature on minoritized populations (e.g., women, Black and Hispanic) in computing and offer insights that can shape computer science locally and nationally. The need to expand who engages in computing is motivated by the necessity to meet national imperatives of occupational demand, foster innovation, build a workforce that better represents U.S. demographics, and fundamentally move towards the objective of social justice. As such, our work can be described as embodying three pillars under Broadening Participation in Computing –1) pathways and experiences, 2) teaching and learning and 3) outreach.

Leveraging content knowledge in both computer science and education research, we have developed rigorous research proposals that have yielded over $7M in grant funding. This funding has resulted in 16 peer-reviewed journal publications, 46 peer reviewed conference proceedings, numerous invited talks across the nation including two National Academy of Science, Medicine, and Engineering (NASEM) panels and invited talk at the (NASEM) Frontiers in Engineering.

Our portfolio of work leverages mixed-methods to answer complex questions and is guided by theoretical frameworks drawn from the social sciences. We aspire to move our work from the theoretical to the practical to instigate change in the culture of computing.