OED Mission

The OED project has two primary missions:

1. The first is what most people think of as the mission of OED: To produce a high-quality, free dashboard in support of sustainability and to address climate change. This is what is discussed above.
2. The second is to be what a group working in this area (including the OED project maintainer) has coined as Education-Oriented HFOSS (Humanitarian and Free Open Source Software) projects. This means that working with students to give them a high-quality, mentored experience is central to OED. This allows students to gain real-world experiences, enhance their education and prepare for a career after graduation while making a concrete difference in the world via their contributions to OED. OED strives to work with all interested students to give as many as possible this rich experience. We understand that our focus requires project resources, but know it is a valuable investment. Furthermore, the OED maintainer is committed to working with students who are AHN (African Americans/Blacks, Hispanic/Latino(a), and Native Americans/Alaskan Natives) (see for terminology) and first-generation in computer science education. To meet this objective, we work with colleges, universities and organizations that serve these populations (sometimes known as MSI or Minority Serving Institutions). In fact, from Spring 2022 through Summer 2023 (latest data when this was last updated), 68% of the 60 students who worked on OED came from MSIs. OED does not ask demographic information of our student developers, so we cannot state the actual percent of students of different backgrounds. However, the pool clearly indicates a strong presence of AHN and first-generation students while still accepting interested students from other types of institutions.