  Despite an increasing number of successful interventions designed to broaden
participation in computing research, there is still significant attrition among
historically marginalized groups in the computing research pipeline. This
experience report describes a first-of-its-kind Undergraduate Consortium (UC)
that addresses this challenge by empowering students with a culmination of
their undergraduate research in a conference setting. The UC, conducted at the
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), aims to broaden
participation in the AI research community by recruiting students, particularly
those from historically marginalized groups, supporting them with mentorship,
advising, and networking as an accelerator toward graduate school, AI research,
and their scientific identity. This paper presents our program design, inspired
by a rich set of evidence-based practices, and a preliminary evaluation of the
first years that points to the UC achieving many of its desired outcomes. We
conclude by discussing insights to improve our program and expand to other
computing communities.
