The NCWIT Academic Alliance Seed Fund awards members of NCWIT's Academic Alliance with start-up funds (up to $15,000 per project) to develop and implement initiatives for recruiting and retaining women in computing and information technology. We thank Microsoft Research for its initial funding of the Seed Fund.

For more information about the NCWIT Academic Alliance and Seed Fund Award program, contact the AA Program Manager.

Sixteen AA member organization have received a total of $220,000 over the first five rounds.

Experimenting with a variety of K-12 outreach models

• "Breakfast Bytes " at University of Texas Austin a Saturday Morning CS club to provide a continuous outlet for engaging middle/high school students, encouraging them to take HS CS classes.
• "CS Outreach Program to High School Girls" at University of Pennsylvania established outreach to high school girls on a regional level. The initiative’s goal is to target students from 500 high schools, and encourage their interest in computing.
• "Just Be: Making IT Real" at Indiana University develops and evaluates three to five team-based activities for high school students, incorporating basic computing concepts using sensors, robots, pervasive computing concepts.
• "Guidance Counselor and Teacher Computer Science Day" will bring high school guidance counselors and teachers to the University of Pennsylvania campus for a day-long workshop on how to become better recruiters for women" s participation in computer science. Counselors and teachers will learn how to talk about the CS field, what admissions officers look for, and ways to identify and encourage student interest.

Recruiting via near-peer mentoring

• "Girl Empowerment Mentoring" at University of Nebraska Lincoln establishs a comprehensive statewide writing program and contest, that includes UNL women CS students as big sister mentors to HS students.
• "Students Recruiting Students to Computer Science" at Oregon State University leverages its highly successful “Ambassadors in Engineering” program as the model for a new student-to-student recruitment initiative focused on attracting college-bound high school students to computing studies.

Targeting cultural barriers

• "Inspiring AmbITion" from Colorado Coalition for Gender and IT develops and disseminates a DVD to recruit women, non-traditional age groups, and underrepresented minorities from community colleges into four-year computing and IT programs.
• "Harnessing Hacking: Encouraging Inclusion through Creativity in IT Education for Latina Youth" at University of California Irvine partners with Girls Inc. Eureka! Summer camp to provide innovative workshops for adolescent girls serving a primarily low SES Latina population.

Changing the Image of IT for vital audiences

• "Are you smarter than your 5th Grader" at Purdue University engages another influential layer, parents, with Pair Programming via 6 Workshops per semester. Open to 24 student/adult pairs and will be offered free of charge.
• "Leveling the CS1 Playing Field" at DePauw University engages first-year women students through role modeling, dispelling myths about computing, and showcasing a broad variety of computing careers and lifestyles in computing.
• "I Can Do IT!" roadshows from Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC) will engage elementary and middle school girls with hands-on activities including programming, wireless technology, and website development. The roadshows will employ mentoring and demonstration from 50-60 WCTC IT students to target hundreds of girls through the Southeastern Wisconsin Girl Scouts council in the critical age group of 6-12 years, when many girls eschew interest in computing and technology.

Creating a supportive environment to retain women we have attracted

• "Emerging Scholars Program" at Columbia University establishes innovative workshops for adolescent girls serving a primarily low SES Latina population. We will support the Girls Inc. Eureka! summer camp. Building on experiences with the summer program will create a series of complimentary workshops for both the middle school girls served by Eureka! and high school girls as part of the College Bound effort.
• "Multi-Level Mentoring" at Towson University implements a multi-level mentoring model, which will combine elements of both intentional role modeling and peer-led team learning toward the ultimate goal of showing all female undergraduates in our programs pathways to success in computing.
• "Dancing Robots Introduction to Computer Science" will redesign an intro to computing course at the University of Texas Pan-American (UTPA) to make it more accessible to women and underrepresented groups. Students will work in teams, on context-based projects, and with mentors while learning programming concepts with LEGO® Mindstorms robots. UTPA, whose student body is 85 percent Hispanic, also will use the course to support outreach and workshops with local high schools as well as conferences for underrepresented groups.

Engagine girls & women through socially relevant projects

• "Golisano Scholars, Kids on Campus" at Rochester Institute of Technology extend RIT's MUPPETS and Virtual Participatory Theatre to HS students in grades 10-12 and also create Golisano Scholars program.
• "Interdisciplinary Approach to Increase Interest in Information Technology Through an Environmental Project" at Claremont Graduate University engages students, especially female and underrepresented groups, through teamwork, problem-based learning, and a socially relevant topic to cultivate interest in IT.

For complete program results and status, download our comprehensive Seed Fund Executive Report.

Original proposals can be downloaded from the Academic Alliance Document Center at the NCWIT Member Site. Or contact the NCWIT Program Manager.