Communications of the ACM
Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Keeps Growing!
Valerie Barr, Professor of Computer Science, Union College
The eleventh Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing opened on November 10, 2011 (well, there were some events on Nov. 9, but I'll get to those in another post). This year the conference is being held in a convention center for the first time in an effort to accommodate the continuing growth. Here are the facts and figures:
- 2908 total attendees, a 35% increase in attendance since 2010, from....
- 146 companies
- 235 academic institutions
- 34 countries
Of course, with that many people, you can imagine that quite a number are involved in planning and presenting:
- 148 people involved in conference and awards committees
- 419 speakers
But here comes the most exciting part, especially for those of us concerned with enrollment issues and the overall numbers of women in computing. There are 1136 students attending, 201 of whom received some form of scholarship, 87 from the National Science Foundation and the remainder from among the 99 corporate sponsors. Longitudinal research shows that attending Grace Hopper has a positive impact on retention in CS, so it is definitely money well spent.
Another absolutely stunning fact: Harvey Mudd College sent 46 students to the conference. That is approx. 6% of the entire student body, and 17% of the women attending HMC. Pretty amazing!
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