> And one of the things I remember noticing, and discussing with other > women in my course, was that so many of the men in that course had > spent the last few years playing with their computers at home, that > they had the advantage of having encountered most of those concepts > before even starting the course. [...] This is not "getting > discouraged because other people are better than you are". It is, > rather, getting discouraged because most of the people you are > competing with have years of background, for whatever reason, that > you lack.
Exactly. I too encountered this, and I'd say that dealing with this was, for me, the hardest aspect of my undergraduate degree course. I went to a talk by Lenore Blum of CMU's [EMAIL PROTECTED] initiative about a year ago, in which she mentioned that CMU's significant boost to percentage of women studying, and sticking with, computer science (from 8% in 1995 to 41% in 2003) was largely due to two things: 1. Change in admissions criteria: The admissions office was told (by Allan Fisher, of "Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing") that prior programming experience was emphatically not a prerequisite for success in the CS major. Raj Reddy, the then Dean of School of Computer Science at CMU, suggested that the admissions office develop criteria that would help select future visionaries and leaders in CS. The admissions office interpreted this as placing high value on activities that demonstrated committment to "giving back to the community." Interestingly, this actually induces a bias in favour high-school girls. 2. Change in curriculum: Rather than a single entry-point to the CS degree, multiple ways of enterring the program were created. There were no other changes to the curriculum. The underlying aim shared by these actions was to eliminate the situation you describe, Helen, in which the absence of years of computing background serves to lower confidence and consequently interest, resulting in fewer women entering and continuing with computer science. Perhaps if more universities were to adopt this principle, then we would see a global increase in women studying CS-related subjects. -- hanna m. wallach blog: http://join-the-dots.org/ work: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/hmw26/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
