|
CMU Joins National Effort to Increase Number of Women in Computing
Carnegie Mellon University is one of 20 universities and 14 companies that will participate in the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Pacesetters, a two-year program that seeks to radically increase the number of women in technology and computing.
NCWIT Pacesetters will use innovative recruitment and retention methods to tap new talent pools and reduce the loss of women at the mid-career level. The program will launch with a Feb. 23 meeting at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Participants include such universities as the University of Washington, Georgia Tech and Indiana University and companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Symantec. CMU also was involved in an earlier two-year pilot program.
Carnegie Mellon has long been active in increasing the number of female computer science majors, with programs such as Women@SCS and outreach workshops for undergraduate students such as OurCS. Women currently comprise 26 percent of undergraduate student majors in CMU's School of Computer Science, while national graduation rates for women in CS are below 12 percent, according to last year's Computer Research Association Taulbee Survey.
NCWIT Pacesetters is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Google and Qualcomm.
Contact:
Byron Spice
412-268-9068
bspice@cs.cmu.edu
|
cs.cmu.edu
