Attracting And Retaining Women In Computer Science And Engineering: Evaluating The Results

Abstract

Abstract NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Attracting and Retaining Women in Computer Science and Engineering: Evaluating the Results Abstract Computer science and engineering communities have been exploring a variety of activities and techniques to attract and retain more students, especially women and minorities, to computer science and computer engineering degree programs1. This paper briefly describes the efforts and results of a plan for actively recruiting young women into undergraduate computer engineering and computer science programs hosted by the University of North Texas (UNT). It also describes a series of activities aimed at improving the retention rate of students already in our programs, particularly during the freshman year. Such recruitment and retention efforts are critical to the country’s efforts to increase the number of engineering professionals, and are a priority for the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department at UNT. We initially designed a three-part plan to achieve our recruitment and retention goals: • Sponsorship of portable and mobile summer computer engineering robotics camps for middle and high-school women students, coordinating with the regional Girl Scouts councils and other organizations to help with the recruitment; • Creation of an Ambassador program using young women currently enrolled in the upper division of current computer science and computer engineering programs as a form of outreach to area high schools and junior colleges; and • Expansion of our successful undergraduate mentoring program by using the Ambassador cohort mentioned above as mentors for incoming freshman and first-year transfer women entering our programs. This paper will focus primarily on the summer camp program and present an analysis of the results we have seen to date after 2 years of camp activities. Results from student surveys and parent surveys will be presented. The paper concludes with recommended changes and improvements in the program, as well as a discussion of adaptations that would create programs suitable for implementation at other institutions as well as programs aimed at a different target population. The three phases previously enumerated each build upon currently accepted educational practices. The robotics summer camp in particular used problem-based learning approaches, similar to those described in The Power of Problem-Based Learning2. This study clearly demonstrates the significant benefits of teaching students how to think by using a problem-based approach. We also developed a mobile laboratory so that the summer camp can be held at several locations, thus broadening and expanding the reach of the camps to traditionally underserved populations and geographical regions. Similarly, both the ambassador and mentoring programs derive from research showing how the recruitment and retention of women in engineering- related fields can be increased by providing opportunities to develop student-to-student relationships3, 4.