Communications of the ACM
Deleting Disparity in Computer Science
"I entered college as a scholarship student. I thought I was just as good, if not better, than the next person in my class," says Mehul Raje, winner of the 2017 Student of Vision ABIE Award.
During a collegiate coding competition in her native India, computer science student Mehul Smriti Raje noticed something striking — she was the only woman in the room.
She knew men far outnumbered women in computer science at universities around the world; her program at the Manipal Institute of Technology had only one female student for every five male students. But that experience threw the disparity into even sharper relief.
Raje, who recently received the Student of Vision ABIE Award from the Anita Borg Institute for her dedication to support, promote, and inspire young women in tech, knew she had to do something to attract more women to the field.
She launched Women Techmakers Manipal, a council to bring female students together to discuss the challenges they face in a male-dominated field, develop computer science skills, and offer support and mentorship to each other. The organization hosted programming games and competitions, career-building sessions, demos, hack-a-thons, and talks by women working in the field. It quickly grew from three participants to 35, and now draws more than 200 students to events.
From Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
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