Tapping New Pools of Talent

Scott McCrickard

Scott McCrickard, Associate Professor, School of Computer Science

Strategies: 

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.

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: 
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Organization URL: 
http://www.cs.vt.edu/

Virginia Tech is an NCWIT Pacesetter. In October 2011, I sat to share that we've seen a 56% increase in the number of female high school students who have met with the school and show interest. We send visiting teams of CS faculty, advisors and students to interact with them as mentors and peers, including female role models from our undergraduate population. We also connect with uncommitted first-year College of Engineering students, with a focus on female students, through face-to-face programs in the first-year classes, during pre-freshman summer programs and at our on-campus engineering women’s dorm, Hypatia.

We also created "designer minors" that combine CS with other disciplines (ex. business, math, psych, bioinformatics), drawing on populations with higher female/male ratios than engineering. Our overall goal for Pacesetters will be attained when we double the number of women CS graduates at Virginia Tech from a baseline of our 2009 graduating class. We also have annual goals of visiting between 20-50 high school girls and graduating 10 women with CS minors. Go Hokies!

Hear Scott tell the Virginia Tech Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1296.

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.

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.

Cedric Stallworth

Cedric Stallworth, Assistant Dean, Office of Outreach, Enrollment & Community

Strategies: 

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: 
Georgia Institute of Technology
Organization URL: 
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/

Georgia Tech has worked hard to level the playing field for women in computing, but there is still much work to be done. Georgia Tech seeks to become a national leader in graduating underrepresented students, and we believe our existing efforts here will also increase our number of net new women.

We are increasing the number of net new women by directly leveraging the strength of our graduate programs and our many relationships with a number of undergraduate institutions. We are using the College of Computing's transfer and dual degree programs as a mechanism for increased diversity. In partnership with local women's colleges, we are establishing a dual degree pipeline in computing and we have extended this to include partnerships with two-year colleges, some of which are increasingly sending transfer students to Georgia Tech. This initiative is focused on steering women who might have some interest in advanced computing, but who don't see an immediate path, into computing majors and degrees. We also are partnering with undergraduate institutions to provide dual degrees for students attending schools with no undergraduate computing degree programs.

Hear Cedric tell the Georgia Tech Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1312.

John Bennett

John Bennett, Director of ATLAS

Strategies: 

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: 
Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society Institute
Organization URL: 
http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/

ATLAS students explore the complex interaction of technology and society and work to realize the full potential of that interaction. We created a new intro course in CS using a virtual world called Second Life and use it as a programming laboratory. We now offer a new track in game development that blends artistic and technical education. We introduced a new Master’s program focused on communication and information technology to improve the quality of life for people in the developing world. Our results to date include an Undergraduate program that is 58% women, a Masters program is 50% women, and a Ph.D. program that is 75% women. We have a lot left to do. Stay tuned!

Hear John share the ATLAS Pacesetters story: http://sitwithme.org/your-story/?story=1293.