Student & Technology in Academia, Research, and Service (STARS)

The STARS Leadership Corps (SLC) is used as a primary vehicle to instill computing values in college students. The following values have been shown to be effective for recruiting and graduating students in computing disciplines. These values are:

1. Excellence - developing students' technical excellence. Motivating and enabling students to become highly competent computing practitioners or researchers. Preparing students for entry into the workforce, graduate school and the professoriate.

2. Leadership - developing student's soft skills, including leadership development, professional development, team work, technical writing, presentation skills, time-management, and work/life balance.

3. Civic engagement and service - developing students' ability and desire to use computing and technology in service to society. Helping students to see the social relevance of computing, both through the workforce and research.

4. Community - developing student's sense of belonging within a larger computing and IT community. This includes information and training on identity development, diversity, gender issues, person with disabilities, and mentoring.

Other goals of the SLC are to increase students knowledge and interest in computing careers among K-12 students'; to identify mechanisms to sustain the impact of the SLC by incorporating components of the program into the computing curriculum among member universities and colleges; and to disseminate the SLC model to other institutions.