91
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
I think Rear Admiral Grace Hopper is perhaps the easiest to explain to new students, and to tie in with an important advancement in computer science.
I try to discuss the transition from early ...
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65
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer - pretty good introduction to a CS class. As Wikipedia puts it:
She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications
beyond pure ...
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46
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
Obviously, there is no way to definitively know the answer to this question. But my favorite theory has to do with the advent of the home PC, and the original marketing of computer games to boys. ...
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42
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
You should probably teach Barbara Liskov and her substitution principle in an introductory CS class. Oh, and she also won some random award... like a Turing award or something... =P
Barbara Liskov ...
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39
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
One of my favorite iconoclastic point-outs is Dorothy Vaughan. One of the USA space program's first computer programmers, who was originally hired as a computer. She was an African-American who grew ...
32
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Shafi Goldwasser is the 2012 Turing award laurete, together with Silvio Micali. The two are considered to be more-or-less the founders of the modern theory of cryptography. They were the first to ...
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24
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Radia Perlman
She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP) [...]. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization, such as ...
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24
votes
How to prepare students for bias in industry
[I asked the question. Even though I don't have the full answer, I want to share what we do, in case it is helpful.]
Role Models
Throughout the entire graduate and undergraduate programs, there are ...
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24
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
Women just like some majors more than others. For whatever reason, they dominate (source):
Health Professions;
Social Work;
Education;
Psychology;
outnumbering men by at least 3-to-1 in all of ...
- 897
22
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
Not having been around at the time, I searched timelines and came up with some interesting data:
As Ben said, marketing targeted men. Advertisements featured boys on personal computers. That was how ...
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19
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Hedy Lamarr, the famous actress, worked with George Antheil during World War II to create a radio system for the US Navy that was safe from jamming by the Axis powers, contributing greatly to the ...
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17
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
I find it amazing that nobody here even mentioned the possibility that men simply find programming much more interesting than women do.
The question can only be answered with a hypothesis so I will ...
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16
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
Computing was historically a female-dominated field. "Computers" used to be mostly women working out mathematical calculations. With the advent of mechanical and then electrical computers (during WW2, ...
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15
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Adele Goldberg was one of the seven programmers that developed Smalltalk, one of the first object oriented programming languages - so nice for your OOP unit. Many concepts developed by her team became ...
- 4,684
13
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
I'd also consider Margaret Hamilton.
Aside from the awesome nerdy picture, she has
published over 130 papers, proceedings, and reports about
the 60 projects and six major programs in which she ...
- 387
13
votes
How to prepare students for bias in industry
As part of our department's colloquium series, we've started holding an annual free showing of a movie that depicts bias, and encouraging all of our students to attend. This showing is in the evening,...
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11
votes
How to prepare students for bias in industry
While not a member of your target group, I've thought about this for years. One of the best things you can do is make sure that the students have both strong ties while students (duh), but also a ...
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11
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Nancy G. Leveson is a pioneer in software safety.
I read her article, co-authored with Clark S. Turner, on the Therac-25 Accidents as an undergraduate and found it approachable and interesting. (She ...
10
votes
Best Practices / Effective Strategies For Building Diversity In High School CS Programs
Three concrete ideas come to mind based on my experience building a CS program essentially from scratch at the high school level:
Have at least one class that has no pre-requisite. We have one intro ...
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8
votes
How to prepare students for bias in industry
As a male high school teacher in a gender-mixed school, there are certain limits to what I can add here, but it is an issue that I care deeply about.
My first source of information would be the girls ...
- 31.2k
8
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
To expand your terms of reference for "people who look like me", you should definitely include Sophie Wilson (born Roger Wilson). She was one of the major developers of the Acorn Atom, and later ...
- 1,072
7
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
While some may have varying opinions, I am a big admirer of Lynn Conway. She originally began her career at IBM and invented pioneering technologies that were eventually used in modern dynamic ...
- 179
7
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
Can't believe no one mentioned Nancy Lynch at MIT of FLP fame, a pioneer in distributed systems theory. The FLP is an impossibility result about obtaining consensus in a distributed system with ...
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7
votes
How to prepare students for bias in industry
If your students excel in what they do and in their careers, treating them in a biased way would hold significantly less ground. There may well be 2-3 people who mistreat them, but their supervisors ...
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6
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
While I have not seen any compelling evidence ether way. I as wondering if there is a true underlying gender element, or at least to deep to be fixed locally (with in CS).
I wonder if this is related ...
- 10.3k
5
votes
How to prepare students for bias in industry
Another suggestion in addition to the many great suggestions provided above would be to encourage them to define where their line is in terms of what they feel is unacceptable behavior. Ask them to ...
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5
votes
Where can I find a breakdown by race and gender of US CS bachelor's degrees?
the Taulbee report An-In Depth Examination of Data and
Trends Regarding Women in Computing provides summary data on computing degrees by ethnicity & gender for 2013 in Table 2 on pg 20 and cites ...
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5
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
I suspect in the US it is a generational issue. A 22 year old woman graduating in 1984 would have been born in 1962 to parents who belonged to the Silent Generation. A 22 year old woman graduating in ...
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5
votes
Why did the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees going to women peak in 1984?
As computer science degrees began to turn into software engineering careers the programs began to take on the culture and workstyle of engineering programs. Unfortunately this often means women face ...
- 51
4
votes
Advances in CS appropriate for CS1 and CS2 made by female computer scientists
With RED (Random Early Detection or Random Early Drop) Sally Floyd was a pioneer in the field of Active Queue Management algorithms. She is also co-author of many important RFCs (SACK, ECN). She ...
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