Globalization in Computer Science Education: A Case Study of Wentworth’s Open House for Nigeria

It is important for colleges to have a diverse applicant pool as part of their diversity and inclusion practices. This paper discusses the recent efforts of faculty and staff at Wentworth Institute of Technology’s School of Computing and Data Science (SCDS), to increase the population of international students from Africa as part of the diversity and inclusion strategies of the University. This resulted in a 2-day event hosted by SCDS, to create awareness about the school’s diversity plans. The event tagged “Virtual Open House for Nigeria” was an inaugural open house event for prospective international students, their families, and sponsors to meet the Wentworth SCDS faculty and learn about our specialties in Computer Science, Computer Networking, Cybersecurity, Applied Mathematics, Applied Computer Science, and Data Science / Business Analytics, and was hosted virtually on October 8-9 2021. Day 1 of the event featured an opportunity for prospective international students from Nigeria, as well as their parents, sponsors, or teachers, to meet the Wentworth Dean and faculty and learn about our specialties in Computer Science, Computer Networking, Cybersecurity, Applied Mathematics, Applied Computer Science, Data Science/Business Analytics, while day 2 featured Data Science and Machine Learning Workshop, as well as a session on strong application and funding tips for prospective students. This paper summarizes some of the activities by the School of Computing and Data Science at Wentworth Institute of Technology, to demonstrate its commitment to inclusiveness through recruitment agenda for international students. Thus, we discuss the day one activities, where the potential students, parents and mentors had the opportunity of interacting with Wentworth faculty and staff in any of three two-hour sessions.