Developing a Question Corpus for a Conversational Agent Designed to Prepare Interested Black Undergraduates for the Professoriate in STEM

To increase the number of African Americans in the highly demanding computing field, a conversational agent is being developed, serving as a supplemental virtual mentor for Black students pursuing the professoriate in engineering or computing. As data on the interest of Black undergraduates in pursuing the engineering and computing professoriate is limited in the literature, it is important to identify the level of interest, factors that contribute to, and questions Black students have about pursuing the professoriate. A survey was administered to undergraduate students at an HBCU enrolled in one of three computer science courses. The results identify levels of likelihood, persuasion and discouragement themes, as well as frequently asked questions over several variables for pursuing the professoriate in STEM as an African American. Questions and data on question type, grammar, syntax and word choice will be used to improve the knowledge database of the virtual mentor.