Role model to lead women into tech world
October 29, 2013 at 1:49 am 3 comments
It’s great to hold this woman up as a role model, but isn’t it a shame that she is so unusual. Only girl in AP CS? One of only five women in CS at Iowa State?
Cassidy Williams was the only girl in her AP computer science class at Downers Grove South High School.
Now, she is one of only five women majoring in computer science, along with 57 men, in the 2014 graduating class at Iowa State University.
It’s a trend the 21-year-old Downers Grove native hopes to help change for future girls studying computer science.
“If we don’t have women in computer science, we’re only seeing half the picture,” Cassidy said. “We need to have women in the computing workforce to bring their diverse perspectives to a development team, thus creating the best products.”
via Suburban wiz wants to lead women into tech world – DailyHerald.com.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: BPC, high school CS, NCWIT, undergraduate, women in computing.
Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
1.
techkim | October 29, 2013 at 6:58 am
I was curious about the ratio at Georgia Tech, so I started searching for that (didn’t find it), but did notice that just having Tech in the name tips the scales toward men for overall enrollment: Georgia Tech (67% male / 33% female), Virginia Tech (59% male / 41% female), Texas Tech (55% male / 45% female), Cal-Tech (62% male / 38% female), MIT (55% male / 45% female).
We hear so much about the Harvey Mudd College success story of broadening inclusion in their CS program and it seems like that would be great promo material for attracting young women, but of course, their program doesn’t show up in the highly ranked programs. Should inclusivity be incorporated into the rankings?
2.
Mark Guzdial | October 29, 2013 at 9:18 am
You can get the Georgia Tech statistics here http://www.irp.gatech.edu. I just looked them up. In undergrad, it’s 204 women out of 1192 undergrads for 17%.
3.
gasstationwithoutpumps | October 29, 2013 at 12:15 pm
Actually, Harvey Mudd does appear high on the ratio of eventual PhDs in CS per bachelor’s graduate. See http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/where-you-get-your-bs-in-cs-matters/
It won’t appear in the Taulbee survey, since it is not a PhD granting institution. While there is a high correlation between the top grad schools and the top undergrad schools, looking just at reputation really only looks at the grad schools. (And some of the top grad schools do a poor job of getting their undergrads to go on to get PhDs, preferring to train their students for immediate jobs instead, so the grad and undergrad programs end up having very different goals—it is not clear that those school have much connection between their grad and undergrad programs.)