Stuart Reges’ recent article entitled “Why Women Don’t Code” elicited strong reactions. I am a colleague of Reges’ in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (UW). Like a number of my colleagues, I found myself surprised and troubled by his article.
CRA has recently hired Alejandra Guzman as a program associate. In this role, Alejandra supports CRA and CRA-W program activities with meeting planning, workshops, outreach activities, and committee support.
CRA-W will hold early and mid career mentoring workshops for women on November 3-4 in Phoenix, AZ. The goal of these workshops is to provide an environment for mentoring, practical information, advice, and support among computing researchers.
CRA-W recently announced two recipients of the 2018 Borg Early Career Award (BECA) – Reetuparna Das and Yejin Choi.
On April 13-14, more than 400 women graduate students in computing from more than 150 institutions converged on San Francisco, CA, for the 2018 CRA-W Graduate Cohort for Women (CRA-W Grad Cohort). Throughout the two-day workshop, professional connections were made, new friendships were formed, and mentoring relationships with senior researchers were established.
The Computing Research Association (CRA) is pleased to honor Mary Fernández with the 2018 Service to CRA Award for her work in transforming the visual identity and communications of the organization. Mary was a member of the CRA Board from 2009 to 2015, during which time she spearheaded several key initiatives to re-brand and revitalize communications.
CRA-W is now accepting applications for the Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) program. Application Deadline: May 18.
Supporting, celebrating, and advocating for women in computing is the mission that lies at the heart of the activities of ACM-W. Our longstanding projects of scholarships, celebrations, and student chapters provide opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to increase their technical knowledge while networking and building community. Recently we have begun to expand our activity to include projects that support populations of women in computing beyond students. This article provides an overview of all of our projects, old and new.
The Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI) is a consortium of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) committed to consolidating the strengths, resources, and efforts of public, private, federal, state, and local organizations that share the core value of increasing the number of Hispanics who pursue and complete baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing areas. CAHSI plays a critical role in evaluating, documenting, and disseminating effective practices that support students in computing disciplines at the critical junctures in the academic pipeline.
CRA has recently hired Daniela Cárdenas as a program assistant. In her new role, Daniela supports CRA and CRA-W program activities with administrative and logistical matters such as planning meetings, workshops, outreach activities, and committee support.
CRA-Women invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award (BECA). The award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research.
Retention and graduation of underrepresented minorities and students with disabilities is critical to creating a strong pipeline of employees for both industry and academia. In early 2017, the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT) announced the call for nominations for the first annual CMD-IT University Award for Retention of Minorities and Students with Disabilities in Computer Science. The University Award was created to recognize a U.S. academic institution that has demonstrated a commitment and shown results for the retention of students from underrepresented groups in undergraduate computer science programs over the last five years.
The CS undergraduate program at the University of Illinois is among the largest in the nation. It has grown by 250 percent over the last decade to nearly 1,800 undergraduates—and it is still growing. In the last four years, the percentage of women in our CS programs rose from 10 percent to more than 25 percent. And our freshmen class in the College of Engineering rose from 11 percent women in 2012 to about 45 percent in 2016.
Check out opportunities to get involved with CRA!
Former CRA Board Member Margaret Martonosi organized a statement on diversity at the MICRO-50 conference.
Recently, CRA board member Kim Hazelwood (Facebook) and Natalie Enright Jerger (University of Toronto) published an article in Computer Architecture Today that analyzed gender diversity in the sub-discipline. CRA’s Jane Stout provides her commentary.
Applications are open for the upcoming CRA-Women Graduate Student Cohort for Women which will be held April 13-14, 2018 in San Francisco, CA. CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women is a two-day workshop for female students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school in computing fields.
The Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) held the 2017 Change Leader Forum in Westminster, Colorado from June 12 – 14, 2017. The Forum provided attendees an unparalleled opportunity to engage with diversity and inclusion advocates, and learn research based best-practices related to gender equity and inclusion in engineering. Nearly 200 attendees representing a variety of institutions and roles participated in the Forum, including university leaders, corporate partners, engineering faculty, K-12 teachers, and academic diversity officers.
The Computing Research Association is pleased to announce a new iteration of the Graduate Cohort Workshop designed specifically for underrepresented minorities in computing and persons with disabilities. Applications are now open for the inaugural CRA URM Graduate Cohort Workshop, which will be held March 16-17, 2018 in San Diego, CA.
After serving the CRA-W community as a Program Associate for two and a half years, Melissa Borts has left CRA to return to school. Melissa is returning to her alma mater, the University of Maryland, to pursue her MBA.
With graduate enrollment increasing for women in computer and information sciences, the entry point for the field’s educational pipeline is more robust than ever. Yet, it appears that the challenge remains to increase retention and completion of degrees. In order to expand the pipeline, our efforts must focus on both recruitment of potential talents and support throughout graduate studies that leads to desired career outcomes.
Most broadening participation efforts have focused on women and underrepresented minorities. However, for more than 10 years, AccessComputing has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to increase the successful participation of students with disabilities in academic programs and careers. AccessComputing addresses underrepresentation by providing multiple activities for students with disabilities.
CRA has recently hired Claire Brady as a program manager. In her new role, she is responsible for planning CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) program events and providing support to initiatives that enrich the community’s awareness of CRA, its committees, mission, and services.
Jaime Teevan will replace Margaret Martonosi on the CRA Board on July 1.
As a little girl growing up in the Dominican Republic, Yerika Jimenez, currently a Ph.D. student in computing at the University of Florida, noticed she had a knack for fixing things – cell phones, TVs, radios. Everyone in her community would bring her broken items, and she would return them repaired. A few years later, when Jimenez was nine years old, her family settled in New Jersey, and her fascination with technology continued.
The main focus of my recent research has been computer science education and the role computer science can play in defining and advancing its own education research. Learning computational principles and learning to code is hard, and teaching these subjects is even harder. For most computer science topics, we know very little about how different learners’ best learn; how to effectively teach the material to audiences with different abilities, backgrounds, and goals; and how to reliably assess learning.
CRA members have elected two new members to its board of directors: Carla Brodley and Kim Hazelwood. Current board members Nancy Amato, Susan Davidson, Dan Grossman, Brent Hailpern, Susanne Hambrusch, Barbara Ryder and Ellen Zegura were re-elected to the CRA board. Also beginning July 1, Brian Noble will be the USENIX representative to the CRA board replacing Margo Seltzer. Retiring from the board as of June 30, 2017 are David Culler, Mary Czerwinski and Seltzer. CRA thanks them all for contributions during their service on the board.
Krintz believes it is important in computing research to push technology forward by including people with diverse perspectives and ideas. To do that, she supports increasing underrepresented minority participation in computing. “I think it benefits both society and technology in general. Personally, it’s just so inspiring to see young people have new ideas, get excited, and want to go out and change the world.”
CRA-Women invites nominations for the Borg Early Career Award (BECA). he award honors the late Anita Borg, who was an early member of CRA-W and is inspired by her commitment to increasing the participation of women in computing research.
Tanya Amert, a computer science Ph.D. student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found herself drawn to computer science because she enjoyed figuring out how things work. At 13 years old, she was a big fan of the Neopets website and online community. Amert noticed some users had customized homepages, and her interest grew even more. Despite not knowing any HTML at the time, she learned how to look at the source code and figured out how to change the color of the scroll bar within the CSS. “I discovered that specific lines of HTML made that happen. And I thought that was mind boggling and awesome.”
