Computer science program
designed for girls only

Rebecca Feng gets help from instructors Lori Pollock (center) and Kathleen McCoy as part of a new program to assist high school girls with computer programming.

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

This summer, the two rising seniors at Caravel Academy near Newark took part in an eight-week computer science program on the UD campus, but their classroom in Memorial Hall looked 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," said Sandra Carberry, computer and information sciences and one of the three faculty members who developed and led the summer's pilot program in web-page design.

"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. Plus, they had a ready-made support group here of other young women who are like them."

The girls in the program, who were juniors and seniors from high schools throughout Delaware and in nearby Pennsylvania and Maryland, said 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 this 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. "When I took a computer class last summer, I was the only girl, and the boys all seemed to be ahead of me. This is much nicer."

That sense of being less skilled than boys is common among girls and young women taking computer courses, Lori Pollock, computer and information sciences, said. Pollock, who also helped design and teach the summer program, said her research on the topic found that many female students in beginning courses are less familiar with computers than their male counterparts– perhaps because computer games tend to be geared toward boys' interests. As a result, she said, girls may feel intimidated, even though, in reality, the boys often share their lack of formal education and programming experience.

The UD summer 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, who were chosen partly on the recommendation of a math teacher, had varying degrees of computer experience but were generally beginners at 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.

"We tried to choose projects that involved programming for more practical purposes that the girls could relate to," Kathleen McCoy, computer and information sciences and the third organizer of the program, said. "And, 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."

Some of the summer projects involved designing web pages that would allow users to share information about themselves with new acquaintances, to shop or to create drawings.

Carberry, Pollock and McCoy arranged for regular guest speakers from the business world, as well as occasional social activities for the class. The three faculty members, all of whom said they had often experienced being the lone woman in a class, especially in graduate school, said 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 said. "I think things are changing for women in the field, and we believe programs like this one can help them change more quickly."

–Ann Manser

Photo by KATHY FLICKINGER