In-Reach

Ed Lazowska

Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering

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.

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.

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 Washington
Organization URL: 
http://www.cs.washington.edu/

University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) created a multi-pronged strategy with the goal of adding "net new" women in computing fields. We targeted female freshman honors students with a new course called "Brave New World: Scientific, Economic and Social Impact of CS". We created popular honors sections in our introductory programming courses with the purpose of engaging smart women and getting some of them to add Computer Science & Engineering to their "might be interested in" list of majors. We coordinated our instructors and support staff to ensure consistent, encouraging communication with students (specifically women) in the Intro the Programming class. Emails sent to high achievers suggested that they consider applying for the major; informational "teas" invited women to network with faculty, students, and staff from the department; and a special women's seminar introduced women to the breadth and depth of CSE by visiting local companies, listening to current student panels, seeing research presentations, and talking about their experiences in the courses.

We also are in the early stages of our traveling road show program, in which CSE graduates and undergraduates visit local middle and high schools to show them exciting applications of computer science. The number of women in the University of Washington CSE is about 4% higher now than when we started; since many of our outreach programs target students early in the pipeline, we hope to continue to see our numbers increase over the next few years.

Hear Ed tell the University of Washington Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1302.

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.

Ken Anderson

Ken Anderson, Associate Professor of Computer Science

Strategies: 

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.

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 Colorado - Boulder
Organization URL: 
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/

At the University of Colorado, the Department of Computer Science is situated within the College of Engineering. While we produce terrific graduates, not all students identify as engineers and our program has endured low enrollments since the dot-com crash and low percentages of female students since the mid-1990s. This is in spite of interest in computer science by the more diverse students of the College of Arts and Sciences who, typically, do not want to take the math and science classes required to transfer to our program.

To address these problems, our participation in Pacesetters motivated us to develop a new degree program - the Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science - to be taught by our department but housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. This new degree program is designed to enable what we call "CS + X": the ability to major in computer science and then earn a degree or minor in a second area of study, such as biology or physics. Interest is strong and we are almost through the approval process. Interest is strong and we anticipate accepting students into this new program by Fall 2012.

Hear Ken tell the University of Colorado at Boulder Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1298.

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.

Ruth Davis

Ruth Davis, Lee and Seymour Graff Professor of Computer Engineering; Associate Dean for Undergraduate Engineering

Strategies: 

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.

Organization Name: 
Santa Clara University
Organization URL: 
http://www.scu.edu/engineering/cse/

At Santa Clara University, we are committed to engaging and retaining young women in our computing programs. We track our female computing majors as they enter their junior year; counting students in their junior year will be a measure of our success in both recruitment and retention. Our goal for fall of 2013 is to have 35% of our computing majors be female.

Santa Clara has implemented a volunteer tutoring program that helps both the tutors and their students. We have increased our support for existing women students by sponsoring several of them to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference each year, along with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology Women of Vision banquet. We host a luncheon for female computing majors on the first day of finals, and we celebrate all of our female engineering students at our "Women in Engineering" dinner every year, where we encourage them to sign up for MentorNet. Each fall Santa Clara tracks the number and gender of students entering and staying in computing majors; likewise, each term that our tutoring program is in place, we track the number of tutor and student pairs, and survey the students about the benefits they feel they've received.

Hear Ruth tell the Santa Clara University Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1300.

Dalene King

Dalene King, Senior Diversity & Inclusion Program Manager

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.

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.

Organization Name: 
Microsoft
Organization URL: 
http://careers.microsoft.com/

At Microsoft, we believe a diverse workforce is key to driving continued innovation. Through cultivating an inclusive environment, we strive to capitalize on the ideas and perspectives of our talent to create the most innovative products, best business solutions, and ideal services for our global customers. As part of this commitment, Microsoft embarked on a partnership with the NCWIT to grow the number of women in computing technology in the industry.

Our approach focuses on three internal programs with the goal of increasing our overall representation. The first program supports the movement of college students into the industry through internships starting at the freshman and sophomore level. The second builds upon our current on-boarding programs by connecting new female hires to others in the company who help support their success at Microsoft. The third program centers on creating a global women’s community at Microsoft for women who deliver technical services and support to customers in the field. Over the last year, this third program focused on raising the visibility of the contributions these technical women provide to Microsoft and the industry, ultimately enhancing their own career advancement and showcasing them as role models for others.

Hear Dalene tell the Microsoft Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1305.

Kim Warren-Martin

Kim Warren-Martin, Women's Initiative Manager, Global Diversity and Inclusion

Strategies: 

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.

Organization Name: 
Intel
Organization URL: 
http://www.intel.com/jobs/

Intel's contribution to Net New Women centers on retention through growth and development of our senior women and pipeline of mid-level technical women. We piloted two programs: Command Presence Workshop is a development opportunity where senior technical women facilitate half-day sessions with the goal of helping mid-level technical women be successful when presenting in task forces, decision-making meetings, and to senior and executive-level audiences. It includes a discussion on constructive confrontation and a simulated "intense meeting" with an executive audience to make the experience as realistic as possible. Command Presence Workshop has helped over 100 mid-level technical women build confidence, command a room, respond to rapid-fire questions...and that number continues to grow.

Extend Our Reach is a strategic sponsorship program designed to help high-potential senior women establish sponsor relationships with influential executive women who can share knowledge and, most importantly, connect them with growth experiences and potentially opportunities for advancement.

Extend Our Reach has added extra resonance having executive women sponsor, not just mentor, their junior female colleagues. The pilot matched 36 female proteges and 27 executive women's sponsors. Its goal is to help the group of senior women move from where they are to where they desire to be. As more executive women learn to excel at sponsoring, the hope is that their expertise and example will cascade down a few levels and across business unites and functions and continue to support and retain women at Intel.

Hear Kim tell the Intel Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1304.

Maureen Biggers

Maureen Biggers, Assistant Dean for Diversity and Education

Strategies: 

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.

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: 
Indiana University
Organization URL: 
http://www.soic.indiana.edu/computer-science/

Since becoming an NCWIT Pacesetter, the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University doubled the number of female undergraduate majors, from 75 to 150 in 18 months. With strong support from the dean, we did it by using an engaging, research-based systemic change model promoted by NCWIT, and having a clear goal and a comprehensive strategic plan.

Initiatives included faculty focus on best practices in pedagogy, programs to increase student success and retention, understanding our students and using that understanding in targeted marketing initiatives, community development to increase sense of belonging, and leveraging the power of parents and peers. It takes a village and this IU Village is now committed to the challenge of doubling it again!

Hear Maureen tell the Indiana University Bloomington Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1301.