The likes of Marie Curie and Jane Goodall may have set great examples for future female scientists, and it’s time that more women follow in their footsteps — especially when it comes to computer science.
For all the jobs available in the industry and programs to train workers for it, a mere 18 percent of computer science graduates in the United States are women. Can we balance out the gender gap amongst computer scientists? Some of the top institutions of higher learning have already started, according to The New York Times.
At Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, 40 percent of incoming freshmen are women, and almost a third of computer science graduates this year were women at the University of Washington. And that’s not all. Harvey Mudd College in California boasts that 40 percent of their computer science program enrollees are female and this year, more than half of their engineering school graduates were women — a first for the school.
As promising as these numbers are, these three schools represent only a fraction of the computer science programs in the country. The question remains – what’s their secret, and how can it spread to every school?
Unsurprisingly, there is no cure-all, but one general trend is helping out everywhere: With so many professional opportunities for computer science majors, the field in general is attracting more students — regardless of gender.
But what sets Carnegie Mellon, University of Washington, and Harvey Mudd apart is that they are grabbing potential students when they’re younger by promoting computer science at an earlier age. By hosting summer camps and training high school teachers to teach computer science, girls are more likely to gain exposure to the discipline and develop a lifelong interest in it.
Another tactic used by these schools is revamping their marketing and support systems. Harvey Mudd, for example, has featured female students in their brochures to show that it’s normal for girls to study science. “We made it very clear that being a female scientist, that’s normal,” said Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd. Plus, the school now talks about computer science as a way to problem solve (as opposed to it simply being about technical coding), putting an emphasis on its practical applications.
At Carnegie Mellon, the requirement to have prior experience in order to enter the major was eliminated and an official student mentorship program was established. By removing barriers and easing the process of becoming a computer science major, more women are showing interest.
Good news is, this can be easily replicated elsewhere.
As Lenore Blum, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon told The New York Times, “I don’t think we’re doing anything that nobody else could do, but it has to be sustained and institutionalized.”
If other schools picked up some tips from this trend-setting trio, America could be well on its way to unlocking a whole new set of minds for computer science.
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Tag: Marie Curie
Finally, a Doll Collection to Truly Inspire Young Girls
Marie Curie. Amelia Earhart. Rosalind Franklin. These influential women each changed the world in their own unique ways. And now, University of Illinois engineering students Jenna Eaves and Supriya Hobbs hope to tout these women’s accomplishments and inspire a new generation of girls with a line of dolls and online community called Miss Possible.
“There are a lot of girls who have the potential to change the world around them, but the underrepresentation of powerful women in youth-oriented media limits the paths they see for themselves,” Eaves and Hobbs explained to the website Women You Should Know. “Boys see presidents, astronauts, and CEOs, but girls are seeing more princesses and hypersexualized images. At Miss Possible, we intend to save girls from limitation, one doll at a time.”
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The Miss Possible dolls, which are still in development, will be created in the likeness of inspiring, historical female figures. With a target market of girls between the ages of 6 and 10, the dolls will resemble these women as 10-year-olds, in order to make them more relatable. Each doll will come with coordinating accessories — such as a science kit for Marie Curie — as well as a code to access Miss Possible’s online community, where girls can work with one another to play games, solve problems and build the skills they need to succeed. The hope is that the dolls will empower girls to follow their dreams — whatever they may be.
“We’re not just a product. We’re not just selling a doll,” Eaves told The Daily Illini. “We’re kind of representing the whole movement of lifting girls up and exposing them to all of the options that they have.
Eaves and Hobbs came up with the idea for Miss Possible while considering what to enter in the 2013 Cozad New Venture Competition, a contest that encourages college students to create sustainable businesses. After placing in the top eight out of 80 competitors, Eaves and Hobbs knew they were onto something. The pair then submitted their idea to Entrepreneurial Excellence: Student Startup Award for Innovation Celebration in February. They are also in the process of submitting Miss Possible in the 2014 Cozad New Venture Competition in hopes to raise funds for the project.
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For now, Eaves and Hobbes are building their team, which has grown to include three designers, two web developers and a marketing specialist, along with developing the prototype for the doll and working on their first online game. In the fall, the pair is planning on launching a crowdsourcing campaign to raise money for the project. And if their Facebook page is any indication, it looks like Miss Possible has already garnered quite a bit of interest.
“What brings strength to what we’re doing is that it’s real women behind it. It’s real women with real stories, and no one can say my life can’t be like that — because someone’s life actually was like that,” Hobbs told The Daily Illini. “We want girls to say she’s done all of these amazing things, and she was once a girl just like me. I can do that too.”
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