CRA-W Sends Distinguished Lecturer to MINK-WIC

The Distinguished Lecture Series (DLS) is designed to encourage women and minority undergraduates to pursue graduate education in computer science and engineering and to increase the visibility of distinguished women and minority researchers from academia and industrial or government research labs. It began as a CRA-W program in 2000 with funding from Lucent and is now run with NSF support.  DLS is led by co-directors Cheryl Seals of Auburn University and Dilma Da Silva of Texas A&M University.

CRA-W’s most recent DLS event was hosted at the Missouri Iowa Nebraska Kansas – Women in Computing (MINK WIC) conference, in Kansas City, November 3rd-4th, 2017.  The MINK WIC conference is a celebration that supports women pursuing degrees in technology. The event takes place over two days and the program is filled with panels, tech talks, workshops, and several keynote speakers. According to conference organizer Sarah Peters, “The CRA-W’s Distinguished Lecture Series helped the conference afford a keynote speaker, Dr. Jakita O. Thomas, whose research and talk were very inspirational. Dr. Thomas’s research follows middle school, African American girls as they develop skills in computational algorithmic thinking through game design. This year’s conference theme was “Diversity. Equity. Inclusivity” and Dr. Thomas’s research allowed us to further explore this topic. It’s important to remind ourselves that all of us CAN be successful in technology no matter who we are.”

To learn more about CRA-W Distinguished Lecture Program visit the DLS program page.