Targeted recruiting means planning strategically: set quantifiable goals; identify large, capable audiences; personalize the content of your message; deliver that message in media that are relevant to your audience; and pay attention to people who influence your audience’s decision-making. High school computer science teachers who actively recruit girls and minority students report more students overall and more female students in their courses.

Engage students not already drawn to computing by creating academic and social environments where these students feel like they belong. Students respond positively to solving real-life problems that draw on their existing knowledge and interests and that involve collaboration in hands-on projects. The middle school computing curriculum in Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District uses Scalable Game Design to introduce computer programming.

Making curricula more relevant to students, introducing collaborative learning into the classroom, and tailoring courses to different student experience levels benefit female as well as male students. This case study focuses on the successful pre- and early-computing major redesign carried out at Harvey Mudd College. Student performance has held steady while skyrocketing women’s representation from consistently less than 20% all the way to 50% of the incoming computer science majors.

Diverse work teams can improve innovation, problem-solving, and productivity. Patenting is one important measure of recognized and rewarded innovation efforts in IT, but female patenting rates are quite low. A few companies have started patenting or innovation communities to increase women’s participation. In order to reap the benefits of diverse innovation, two companies implement “inventor learning communities” to increase female participation in innovation and patenting.