The Culture of Computer Science
This month's AAUW week posts will focus on the culture of college and university science and engineering departments, the subject of chapter six of Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
At the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Jane Margolis conducted a four-year study of women in the program with Allan Fisher, associate dean for undergraduate computer science education at Carnegie Mellon. Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing describes their unusual (and successful) project, which combined ethnographic research with a goal of increasing the number of women in the department. The proportion of incoming female students increased from 7 percent at the beginning of the study to 42 percent at the end.
In the words of Margolis and Fisher, "The rub for women in computer science is that the dominant computer science culture does not venerate balance of multiple interests. Instead the singular and obsessive interest in computing that is common among men is assumed to be the road to success in computing. This model shapes the assumptions of who will succeed and who ‘belongs' in the discipline."
But the reality is that young women and men often come to computer science in different ways. While many young men in computer science do report having had an immediate and strong engagement with the computer from an early age, many women who are interested in computer science report a more moderate interest, especially early on, that builds gradually. As a result, women can feel like they don't fit the mold of a computer scientist, and feeling like a misfit can lower confidence. Margolis and Fisher assert that "the decline in women's confidence must be acknowledged as an institutional problem."
One recommendation that they make is for science and engineering departments to send an inclusive message about who makes a good (computer) science student. Carnegie Mellon changed the admissions policy that gave preference to applicants with a lot of previous programming experience once the university realized that this was not key to student success. This change sent a more inclusive message about who could be a successful computer science student and helped Carnegie Mellon recruit more women with no change in the quality of the applicant pool.
Has your department implemented any policies expressly to increase the diversity of applicants? Have these strategies been successful?
Xenia and Laura,
Thanks for your comments! Xenia, in answer to your question, Allan Fisher was the associate dean for undergraduate computer science education at Carnegie Mellon, and concerned about the scarcity of women in his department. His motivation to solve this problem was a big part of the success of the project.
And Laura, you ask a good question. Here's how they describe what they did. They noticed through their interviews with students that women often felt distressed in the introductory programming courses because they were often behind their peers in terms of programming experience. So, they first instituted a curricular change that provided introductory students with four different ways to enter the curriculum, depending on their level of experience. According to Margolis and Fisher, these changes increased levels of satisfaction among both more and less experienced students and seemed to result in the smooth integration of the less experienced students into the remainder of the curriculum. They write that once they made these curriculum changes that allowed inexperienced students to succeed with great levels of success, they then changed the admissions criteria.
Christi
It's great to see a major university take on such a strong role in addressing the lack of females in Computer Science. Do you know if there is a specific administrator there who pushed this agenda, or one or more faculty who convinced people to do this? I am always interested in how unusual strategies get started.
XD
Dear Christianne,
This is very interesting information. For sure, if there are almost fifty percent women in the entering class, that will send a message about who is welcome. Do you know how they found out that all that previous computer programming did not predict success? Was it just examining records of their students?
BTW, I've been interested in Carnegie-Mellon's group with both design and computing emphasis, where Jody Forlizzi and others work on making computers more human-friendly. They've done a lot of thinking and experiments on what people do and do not welcome having computers "help" with. That is, some tasks are "owned" by the humans and they don't want to give them up to computer help, but other tasks don't feel that way. The Carnegie Mellon group has tried to be sensitive to that, unlike Microsoft, which always seems to try to take over capitalization inappropriately or make other "father knows best" changes in my text in Word.
cheers,
Laura
