Group Seeks to Make Computer Science More Attractive

By DAN CARNEVALE

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