Professor Tracy Larrabee

Professor of Computer Science & Engineering
University of California, Santa Cruz

Professor Larrabee says she started teaching over 30 years ago to increase representation of women in academia. After decades of teaching, she has finally succeeded in closing the performance gap between under-represented minority and first generation students and the rest of the class in her computer science and engineering courses. She uses a three prong approach to promote inclusion and belonging in her classroom. (1) Support a diverse teaching staff. This includes various axes of diversity as well as several levels of teaching, including instructors, teaching assistants and tutors. (2) Emphasize the benefits of “failure”. Instructors can do this in a structured way by giving points for test and homework corrections or ungraded assignments whose material is reviewed in class but tested subsequently in quizzes or tests, and behaviorally by addressing this subject directly as well as incorporating lessons about failure and overcoming mistakes or highlighting one’s own mistakes in class and talking about how to identify and correct them. 

[A] technique I use is to emphasize failure as the appropriate path to learning. Engineering is hard; it’s good to fail the first time you attempt a problem. People who fail at a problem the first time tend to retain things better than those who luck into the right answer.

Finally, (3) address stereotype threat directly in class. While this can be hard or awkward, defining and taking about these added pressures can lower barriers for those dealing with it and see your course and you as an instructor as a support in taking it on.