Catch 'em Early: Internship and Assistantship CS Mentoring Programs for Underclassmen.

Recruiting and retaining STEM majors has been an ongoing challenge for colleges and universities. This research paper describes two initiatives to recruit and retain Computer Science (CS) majors that were implemented at Siena College starting in the fall of 2014. Both initiatives are directed at rising sophomores who have completed the first year CS sequence as an early strategy to encourage them to declare and complete the CS major. The first initiative is an early internship program directed at providing students an opportunity to apply those technical skills, extend their skill set, and introduce them to meaningful real-world projects between their freshman and sophomore years. The second initiative is a lab/classroom assistant program where sophomore or older students provide mentoring during lecture and lab sessions for the introductory CS courses. The paper provides preliminary findings, lessons learned, and directions for the future.