Created for school counselors by Counselors for Computing (C4C), a project of the NCWIT K-12 Alliance made possible by the Merck Company Foundation, this card gives adults talking points and additional resources for a conversation with their students, children, and/or other young people. The main message is that IT offers meaningful work, security and high salaries with a bachelor’s degree, and flexibility and variety. Information is provided to address these specific questions: What should you tell a young person about a career in IT?

Women and minority students are not in computing courses under the same conditions as their white male classmates. Instructional practices offer opportunities to level the playing field and improve the retention of underrepresented students. Professor William Waite abstained from lecturing his students on assigned reading and relied instead on the students to direct the information discussed in the classroom.

Change agents must understand and consider their organization’s complex and interlocking systems. Plans for change must ensure that subsystems work in harmony with each other to reinforce the envisioned change. This resource outlines the prerequisites to transforming for diversity in undergraduate computing and explains NCWIT’s Extension Services for Undergraduate Programs (ES-UP). Members of the Academic Alliance are entitled to free services from the NCWIT ES-UP in support of their organizational change.

NCWIT's Women in IT: By the Numbers presents the most compelling statistics on women's participation in IT on a single page.