Robots to the Rescue

By JOSH FISCHMAN

Women are vanishing from computer-science programs. Can the Scribbler lure them back?

Robots roughly the size and shape of large turtles — if turtles were bright blue, with wheels on either side and a pen-sized hole in the center — scuttle along the floors of a women's liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania and a technology institute in Georgia. They draw squares. They run away from lights. They play the tune "La Cucaracha" and the theme from Close Encounters of the