Computer science, long portrayed as a club for boys with few social skills, is about to get a makeover.
A new organization seeks to attract women and underrepresented minorities to the field by promoting computer-science courses as more welcoming and more sociable than they are reputed to be.
“IT and computing have the image of not being a very people-friendly field,” says Teresa A. Dahlberg, an associate professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the director of the Stars Alliance, a 10-institution consortium that wants to open the doors of technology courses to underrepresented groups. The group just received a three-year, $2-million grant from the National Science Foundation.
Larry Dennis, dean of the College of Information at Florida State University, is a co-principal investigator in the consortium. He says many colleges make introductory computer courses especially difficult to weed out all but the most serious students.
That removes many smart people who could go on to become capable computer scientists, says Mr. Dennis. “We’re looking at curricular and infrastructure changes to make these courses more attractive to everybody,” he says. “Not just women and minorities, but everybody.”
One method is to provide courses on Web-site development and multimedia applications — the fun stuff — before putting students through a barrage of mathematics and computer-coding courses.
That way, says Mr. Dennis, students will get to see what they have to look forward to.
The group hopes to expand beyond the 10 participating institutions, he says. Members will try to spread the word to other colleges to overcome the perception, right or wrong, that computer science is for antisocial boys.
Changing that perception would give the discipline “much more appeal to women,” says Mr. Dennis, “because they’re interested in what’s the social impact. They’re usually not as interested in spending all their time in front of a computer.”
In addition, Ms. Dahlberg says, prospective employers want computer scientists who have social skills. Computer specialists need to be able to explain techno-jargon to the layman.
To encourage that development, the alliance is creating a program in which computer-science majors will visit students in middle and high schools to promote technology education and act as mentors. That teaches college students to talk tech with non-computer-savvy people while also recruiting more people to computer science. It also helps get middle-school students prepared for a computer-science major by encouraging them to get the required math courses out of the way early.
Undergraduates who participate in the outreach program will get $500 per semester. Graduate students will get $1,000.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 52, Issue 40, Page A29