Communications of the ACM
Stevens Launches Effort to Recruit More Women to Key Majors
The Stevens Institute plan includes recruiting and retention strategies designed to attract more undergraduate women into computer science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering.
Credit: Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Stevens Institute of Technology is partnering with the "Extension Services – Undergraduate Programs" (ES-UP) initiative of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) to implement a new strategic plan for recruiting more women into the fields of computer science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering. The plan includes recruiting and retention strategies designed to attract more undergraduate women into these majors.
The first step, initiated in Fall 2013, is an Ambassadors program that sends Stevens undergraduate women students into area high schools and brings K-12 girls' groups to campus for curriculum-specific visits during which female Stevens students perform engaging technology demonstrations, serve as role models, and discuss educational possibilities and career paths in information technology as well as other STEM fields.
A second initiative to inform and reach out to potential future students involves undergraduate computer science majors from Stevens teaching 6th- through 8th-grade students in Chatham, New Jersey, as part of the "ChathamSTEM" program that provides young students exposure to information technologies. Over 10 weeks in early 2014 Stevens students will teach after-school classes in Chatham on subjects such as Lego Robotics, programming in Scratch and Python, and Android application development.
University faculty and administrators are excited to learn more about what they can do to improve the recruitment and retention of women in the targeted majors as well as other STEM fields. Stevens Computer Science Department Director Daniel Duchamp explains: "There are exciting intellectual challenges and rewarding career opportunities in information technology fields, and women who enroll at a technological university such as Stevens are exceptionally well prepared for study in these fields. It is important that we reach out to high school girls and make them aware of the many exciting possibilities that are available to them."
"Encouraging young women's interest in technology careers is critical: our workforce needs their creativity and their innovation," says Lucy Sanders, CEO and co-founder of NCWIT. "The goal of this launch is to immediately increase the visibility and raw numbers of women in these programs."
The team includes faculty members from across Stevens including Dr.Daniel Duchamp, Director of the Computer Science Department; Jennifer Chen, Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department; Hong Man, Associate Professor and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program Director in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department; Kristie Damell, Assistant Dean of Students and Coordinator of Women’s Programs; Marissa Brock, Associate Director of Recruitment; Susan Metz, Director of Diversity and Inclusion; and NCWIT Extension Services Consultant Jennifer Goodall, Assistant Dean in the College of Computing and Information at the University at Albany, SUNY.
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