First Course Experience

Jim Cohoon

Jim Cohoon, Professor

Strategies: 

First Course Experience

Improving the first course can appeal to a broader demographic (not just women) by teaching computing in context and showing how computing skills can be is applied to disciplines such as healthcare, disabilities, or the arts. Such introductory courses introduce computational thinking skills (as opposed to just the mechanics of coding), keep students engaged, and increase retention in the major.

Starting Young

Outreach and programs that target middle and high school girls are important because they engage girls before they lose interest or decide to pursue other fields. Programs such as the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing and Dot Diva provide encouragement, inspiration, and community to young women that can influence career decisions.

Organization Name: 
University of Virginia
Organization URL: 
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/

Computer Science at the University of Virginia is committed to an environment where diverse, capable, inspired individuals can collaborate to learn and advance knowledge. Our reasoning is trifold: we wish to be a model in reaping and sharing the benefits of diversity; we seek to enhance our intellectual and creative environment; and we expect to better produce happy, capable, and broadly-educated graduates.

To support our vision we have three undergraduate programs: B.A. and B. S. degrees in Computer Science, and a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering. These offerings allow our students flexibility to tailor their education towards their careers goals. We call our "Net New Women" goal 30-30-30. We want female undergraduate and graduate participation in computing to reflect their overall school demographics of 30%. It is also our intention to see the percentage of women faculty exceed 30%. To help us achieve a diverse, well-qualified undergraduate body we actively recruit with career nights and with three first-year course offerings. Although all offerings prepare students for immediate entry into secondary courses, they differ in pedagogy and intended audiences, from the inexperienced to the experienced. These practices are achieving results. Our major graduation rates are projected to climb from a historic high of 15% to over 25% women.

See Jim's University of Virginia Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1426.

Tiffany Grady

Tiffany Grady, Assistant Director for Academic Initiatives

Strategies: 

First Course Experience

Improving the first course can appeal to a broader demographic (not just women) by teaching computing in context and showing how computing skills can be is applied to disciplines such as healthcare, disabilities, or the arts. Such introductory courses introduce computational thinking skills (as opposed to just the mechanics of coding), keep students engaged, and increase retention in the major.

In-Reach

In-reach means looking more closely at the women already on campus and those already working in your company to recruit from the inside. Women already connected to your organization can be motivated to study CS / IT majors or take on variety of technical corporate jobs when they receive direct motivation to do so.

Starting Young

Outreach and programs that target middle and high school girls are important because they engage girls before they lose interest or decide to pursue other fields. Programs such as the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing and Dot Diva provide encouragement, inspiration, and community to young women that can influence career decisions.

Targeting Influencers

Faculty, admissions staff, counselors, parents, mentors, managers, and peers are all powerful influencers of women's decisions to enter or stay in a technical career. Influencing the influencers provides an inflection point for causing them to consider their own biases or perceptions, and helping them encourage more women to pursue technical careers.

Organization Name: 
University of Texas - Austin
Organization URL: 
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/

The Department of Computer Science at UT-Austin set a goal to increase the number of women entering the computer science undergraduate program and, through carefully targeted steps, we were able to double the number of new female students in one year.

First, we set up meetings with admissions to let them know our goals for increasing our numbers. Last year, we requested 40 slots for focused recruiting; this year, we doubled the number of women admitted. In addition, we focused efforts to recruit students from our First Bytes camp, as well as undecided students already in the College. Many faculty members pitched in to encourage students taking our Elements program, which is a set of computer science classes targeted toward non-majors, to consider a computer science major. We provided faculty and student mentoring for first-year women, which helped tremendously with retention. We also offer scholarships sponsored by the National Science Foundation to many of our incoming female freshmen, as well as scholarships for winners of the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. Each of these efforts has impacted our success.

Hear Tiffany tell the University of Texas at Austin Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1295.

Adrienne Harrell

Adrienne Harrell, Director of Undergraduate Student Affairs

Strategies: 

Community and Visibility

Partner with existing groups (company affinity groups, supervisory groups, local community organizations) to offer opportunities that women weren't aware of and to recruit and advance women into computing fields. This may involve efforts to change the image of computing or improving how the organization celebrates women's technical contributions and accomplishments.

First Course Experience

Improving the first course can appeal to a broader demographic (not just women) by teaching computing in context and showing how computing skills can be is applied to disciplines such as healthcare, disabilities, or the arts. Such introductory courses introduce computational thinking skills (as opposed to just the mechanics of coding), keep students engaged, and increase retention in the major.

In-Reach

In-reach means looking more closely at the women already on campus and those already working in your company to recruit from the inside. Women already connected to your organization can be motivated to study CS / IT majors or take on variety of technical corporate jobs when they receive direct motivation to do so.

Starting Young

Outreach and programs that target middle and high school girls are important because they engage girls before they lose interest or decide to pursue other fields. Programs such as the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing and Dot Diva provide encouragement, inspiration, and community to young women that can influence career decisions.

Tapping New Pools of Talent

Sometimes it's helpful to look externally for new pools of talent and introduce them to computing fields and careers. This can include offering new majors or creating interdisciplinary majors that allow students to combine computing skills with a variety of fields that interest them, or providing training to current employees that allows them to switch to a technical track.

Organization Name: 
University of California - Santa Cruz
Organization URL: 
http://www.cs.ucsc.edu/

Over the last 18 months, the number of women majoring in computer science at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) has increased by 40%. Faculty and staff at the Jack Baskin School of Engineering (JBSOE) have introduced a number of initiatives to encourage greater participation of women in computing on campus.

We are reaching out to middle school girls with a summer camp called "Girls in Engineering", which focuses computer science and engineering. Through our participation in the Bay Area Affiliate of the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing, we are encouraging high-school-age young women to pursue computing and establishing UCSC as a women-friendly place to study computing. An outreach "road show" is designed to influence more young women to consider computer science as a college option.

Our NSF-funded scholarship program targets financially disadvantaged students, especially women, and includes a unique live-and-learn community and shared curriculum in the first year. We also are reaching out to women already at UCSC through the redesign of an entry-level course and an advertising campaign we call "Project Awesome." Project Awesome is an aggressive "in-reach" program targeting first- and second-year women with brochures mailed to their homes, welcome events on campus, and a website (http://awesome.soe.ucsc.edu) that provides encouragement and incentive to study computing.

Hear Adrienne tell the University of California Santa Cruz Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1306.

Debra Richardson

Debra Richardson, Ted and Janice Smith Family Foundation, Dean of Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science

Strategies: 

First Course Experience

Improving the first course can appeal to a broader demographic (not just women) by teaching computing in context and showing how computing skills can be is applied to disciplines such as healthcare, disabilities, or the arts. Such introductory courses introduce computational thinking skills (as opposed to just the mechanics of coding), keep students engaged, and increase retention in the major.

Tapping New Pools of Talent

Sometimes it's helpful to look externally for new pools of talent and introduce them to computing fields and careers. This can include offering new majors or creating interdisciplinary majors that allow students to combine computing skills with a variety of fields that interest them, or providing training to current employees that allows them to switch to a technical track.

Organization Name: 
University of California - Irvine
Organization URL: 
http://www.ics.uci.edu/

At UCI, we’ve introduced a set of non-major courses, covering topics such as the social impact of Internet technologies, human factors for the web, end environmental issues in information technology, and others. These courses are targeted to students who might not otherwise consider a course in computing, especially women We’ve also developed a minor in Digital Information Systems that packages these courses together with upper division courses for students who want to learn about information systems, computation, and digital communication without preparing to be computer programmers. Although we can’t tell how many women might be pursuing the minor, we do know that over half of the students enrolled in these courses are women. Now that’s an achievement!

Hear Debra tell the University of California, Irvine Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1287.

Nilka Thomas

Nilka Thomas, Global Diversity & Inclusion Programs Manager

Strategies: 

First Course Experience

Improving the first course can appeal to a broader demographic (not just women) by teaching computing in context and showing how computing skills can be is applied to disciplines such as healthcare, disabilities, or the arts. Such introductory courses introduce computational thinking skills (as opposed to just the mechanics of coding), keep students engaged, and increase retention in the major.

Organization Name: 
Google
Organization URL: 
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/index.html

Google's university programs have always made efforts to reach women on campus, but in 2011, we began a new program targeted at increasing the number of female software engineering interns at Google. Google.GetAJob() is different: instead of just going to a campus, we bring college women to the Google offices, where they attend a career development panel with Google engineers, participate in mock technical interviews, and get a tour of a Google office. The first Google.GetAJob() event in January 2011 resulted in doubling the number of women interns in 2011, compared to the year prior.

In September 2011 we hosted four additional Google.GetAJob() events in Boulder, Colorado; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Waterloo, Ontario Canada. In addition to expanding to multiple sites, the number of applicants to these events grew by 500% and the number of attendees grew by 600%. The feedback we've received so far from attendees has been very positive, and the Google volunteers (more than 80 of them) enjoyed these events as well. We are hopeful that this event will continue to grow and result in increasing numbers of women applying for and accepting jobs within Google.

Ignatios Vakalis

Ignatios Vakalis, Chair, Department of Computer Science

Strategies: 

Community and Visibility

Partner with existing groups (company affinity groups, supervisory groups, local community organizations) to offer opportunities that women weren't aware of and to recruit and advance women into computing fields. This may involve efforts to change the image of computing or improving how the organization celebrates women's technical contributions and accomplishments.

First Course Experience

Improving the first course can appeal to a broader demographic (not just women) by teaching computing in context and showing how computing skills can be is applied to disciplines such as healthcare, disabilities, or the arts. Such introductory courses introduce computational thinking skills (as opposed to just the mechanics of coding), keep students engaged, and increase retention in the major.

Organization Name: 
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Organization URL: 
https://www.csc.calpoly.edu/

At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, students in computer science and software engineering expressed interest in learning more technologies in context and application, beginning very early in their major. In 2010 we revised our first-year course selections, so that now students can choose from introductory computing courses such as Game Design, Mobile App Development, Robotics, Music Composition, and Computational Art. These new courses reflect the evolution of computing instruction by giving students choices in their introductory class, teaching "algorithmic thinking," using context to draw students in and keep their interest, and implementing project-based learning in a group environment. Our evaluators are looking at recruitment, retention, and learning outcomes but initial results show that this approach has been especially popular and effective with female students.

Cal Poly also has emphasized opportunities for women in computing to develop visibility for themselves and the field. Our Computer Science Department promotes the women in computing student club, runs a speaker series, and established a mentoring mechanism for female students. The department supports female students attending the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference, and will be hosting an NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing affiliate for high school girls. Women in computing majors are visiting their former high schools, using NCWIT road show materials to ignite the passion of prospective students.

Hear Ignatios share the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1294.