Diversifying the Next Generation of Information Scientists: Six Years of Implementation and Outcomes for a Year-Long REU Program

The iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3) is a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in the US designed to address underrepresentation in the information sciences. i3 is a year-long, cohortbased program that prepares undergraduate students for graduate school in information science and is rooted in a research and leadership development curriculum. Using data from six years of i3 cohorts, we present in this paper a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the program in terms of student learning, research production, and graduate school enrollment. We find that students who participate in i3 report significant learning gains in information-science-and graduate-school-related areas and that 52% of i3 participants enroll in graduate school, over 2x the national average. Based on these and additional results, we distill recommendations for future implementations of similar programs to address underrepresentation in information science.