This workbook presents some guidelines for strategically planning a multi-pronged approach to retain females — and all students — in undergraduate computing programs of study.

Women in scientific disciplines face challenges that range from institutionalized bias to differences in communication styles and a lack of female role models. Mentoring-in-a-Box: Women Faculty in Computing can help you start and sustain a successful mentoring relationship.

Encouragement increases self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to successfully perform a task. Because we are more likely to engage in tasks that we believe we can perform successfully, encouragement may be especially useful for attracting women to male-stereotyped fields such as computing. Simple though encouragement is, fewer than half of the faculty members in the average computer science department in the United States say they do it.

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.