Tapia Conference

So I missed the lecture on April 2nd because I was attending the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing 2009 conference. This conference was in Portland. I really liked Portland, except for all the rain. I figured I could write a little about my experience at the conference.

The Tapia conference brings together students who are underrepresented in computing, including hispanics/latinos, african-americans, women, pacific islanders, and native americans. There were about 400 attendees in the conference. Joel Martinez, an undergraduate in CS, and I were the "representatives" of UNR (not really representatives, we were just the only ones from UNR). The conference consisted of several parallel tracks: faculty workshops, a doctoral symposium, and workshops tailored for career building (such as resume stuff). There was also a poster and a robotics competition.

The goal of the conference is to get students to network, and to motivate students to pursue graduate degrees and to realize that they are not alone (with regards to being minority students in their departments). Most of these programs seem to really focus on this idea of helping students who might help alienated in their departments. I think it's a noble sentiment, but I've never really felt alienated in my department, even though there are no latino/hispanic faculty members. Many students talk about the need to see someone who is just like them, coming from similar ethnic backgrounds, etc. Maybe it's different in other departments, but at least here at UNR I've always had strong support from faculty members, and have been fortunate to have positive experiences (for the most part).