When Britt Ewald and Lorenna Lee walked into their high school's advanced placement computer class at the start of their junior year, they say, they saw immediately that they had something in common: They were the only girls in the room.

Last summer, the two rising seniors at Caravel Academy near Wilmington, Del., took part in an eight-week computer science program on the UD campus, but their classroom in Memorial Hall looked distinctly different from what they'd been used to. All 21 high school students--as well as the three faculty members and four teaching assistants--were female.

"We've all noticed the shortage of women in the computer field, and we designed this program to try to encourage girls at a younger age to explore the possibilities," says Sandra Carberry, chairperson of the University's Department of Computer and Information Sciences and one of the three faculty members who developed and led the summer pilot project in programming for web-page design.

Lori Pollock, associate professor of computer and information sciences and another organizer of the program, says the idea of reaching out to high school girls occurred to her after she returned from sabbatical last year and found that all 35 students in an undergraduate class she was teaching were male. She began researching what other schools were doing to address the shortage of women in the field and came up with the idea for a summer program on campus.

The UD program, known as POWER (Programming of the Web Rocks), was funded by a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, which has a gender-equity initiative to encourage women to explore traditionally male-dominated technical fields. The girls, high school juniors and seniors who were chosen partly on the recommendation of a math teacher, had varying degrees of computer experience but were generally beginners at programming and web-page design. They attended class four hours a day, five days a week, for eight weeks. At the end of the program, each received a $1,000 stipend.

Pollock says the idea of offering the stipend came from National Science Foundation officials who reviewed UD's grant application for the program. Since most 16- and 17-year-olds hold summer jobs, she says, the payment encouraged participation in the computer class by compensating the students for lost earnings.

Carberry, Pollock and Kathleen McCoy, also an associate professor in the department, say they planned the curriculum--from the general topic of web design to the specific projects they assigned--precisely to appeal to teen-age girls.

For example, one project required students to set up their own mock, online store, selling whatever merchandise they chose and devising ways for customers to view and purchase items. Designing the web site required students to learn and apply the same skills they would have used in any other introductory programming course, but the retail aspect was probably more appealing to girls than some other projects might have been, Pollock says.

"We tried to address what may be a male orientation in some programming courses by making our curriculum more applicable to the girls' interests and their daily lives," Carberry says. "Plus, they had a ready-made support group here of other young women who are like them."

The girls in the program, representing 11 high schools throughout Delaware and in nearby Pennsylvania and Maryland, say they appreciated the feeling of not being conspicuous in class because of their gender.

"I knew that I wanted to take some kind of computer course during the summer, and this is a really accepting environment," Sanford School student Meghan Pasricha said in class one day as she worked to lay out elements of a web page. "Everyone is basically at the same level and very friendly and encouraging."

"I think the fact that this program is all girls is very cool," Quyen Duong, who attends the Charter School of Wilmington, said during the same class session. "When I took a computer class [the previous summer], I was the only girl, and the boys all seemed to be ahead of me. This is much nicer."

In addition to the online shopping project, another web site the students designed in the program produced a questionnaire allowing users to share information about themselves with new acquaintances.

McCoy says the way in which the projects were accomplished--not just their content--was also structured with female preferences in mind. "We often had them work in groups, since some research shows that girls may not be as interested in the field because they believe computer specialists work alone with no social interaction, which is not the case," she says.

The program featured several speakers from the business world, as well as occasional social activities for the class. The three faculty members, all of whom say they often experienced being the lone woman in a class, especially in graduate school, say they hope to offer the program again in future summers.

"It's unusual to have a computer science department with three tenure-track women on the faculty," Carberry says. "I think things are changing for women in the field, and we believe programs like this one can help them change more quickly."

Sharon Holt, AS 2002, a computer science major who worked as a teaching assistant with the program, says its biggest value probably lies in making students familiar and comfortable with computers. When she was in high school, she says, fear of damaging her father's computer prevented her from developing her skills.

"I didn't start to really play with computers until I was a freshman [at UD] and had my own, and that's what you have to do--experiment, play, realize that you aren't going to break them," she says. "This summer program was a great opportunity for these students. I wish I had been able to take a course like this."

--Ann Manser, AS'73, CHEP'73