critical thinking activities. LCs first cameto our institution, City Tech, through a Title V Grant in 2000 and were adopted by the college in2005. The academic performance of students participating in LCs at City Tech reflects nationaltrends. When compared to the general population at the College, students in LC earn higherGPAs, have higher retention rates, and demonstrate greater satisfaction.In order to complement the community-building efforts within learning community classrooms,we, a cohort of faculty leaders and administrators of City Tech’s First Year LearningCommunities, a program offered through the college’s Office of First Year Programs, developed“Our Stories” digital writing project which extends the student’s network beyond the
al., 2015). Yet, about 500,000computing positions remain vacant in the US ("The state of K-12 computer science", 2016), andmany nations need more computer scientists. Therefore, the underrepresentation of women incomputer science is an important topic that has begun to garner university program’s attention.This shortage of computer scientists has prompted the computing community and educationresearchers to be more reflective about current practices in order to try to attract and retain morestudents, especially women, to keep pace with industry demands. As such, researchers haveexplored various engagement strategies in the field of computer science. One of the strategies withincreased attention in the last two decades is the idea of