Bootstrapping is intended as a hands-on 'way in' to high-quality CS Education research for Computer Science higher-education faculty. Supported by a major grant from the National Science Foundation and by Washington State's newly established Institute of Technology at the University of Washington-Tacoma, Bootstrapping will use a workshop format to bring practitioners and expert researchers together in order to initiate principled, large-scale teaching and learning research. Participation in Bootstrapping involves:

• Attending an initial workshop which will introduce techniques and methodologies in CS Ed research, help build collaborative research relationships with other CS higher-ed faculty, and introduce a shared research problem. This workshop takes place June 1 - 6, 2002 in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
• Carrying out research during the following academic year. Participants will gather data in their own classrooms and keep in touch via the Internet.
• Attending a capstone workshop in the Pacific Northwest June 7 - 12, 2003 in order to share results, analyze data, make plans for reporting and disseminating those results in professional journals, and for collaborating on follow-up research.

On completion of the program, participants should:

• have a respect for theory, evidence, multiple methods, and honesty;
• have a model of what constitutes good research and good research reporting;
• be able to frame research questions and have some idea about how to find out how to investigate them;
• be able to conduct a study once specified;
• know where to go for additional discourse and support.