Abstract:

Research indicates that diverse teams create better financial outcomes for companies (Mckinsey, 2015). However, still today, women continue to be underrepresented within universities and corporate industries in areas such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics who are majoring or working in STEM specific professions. Specifically, the fields of engineering and technology the race and gender gap are still a large problem. For example, the percentage of women receiving computing and technology degrees dropped to as low as 16% in 2011 and has remained around 19% stated by US World Economy. Moreover, women continuously face barriers that include race, gender, discrimination, career, employment, and compensation within STEM disciplines. Furthermore, despite women having 57% professional jobs in the United States, only 26% are computing and technology and 25% overall in STEM disciplines (Beede et al., 2011) This could be attributed to several issues, including a shortage of female role models (in academia and corporate industries) and race and gender stereotyping, cited by the U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration (Beede et al., 2011). The demand for educational institutions to intentionally create and deliver effective pipeline programming that exposes diverse students into technology and commuting will create more diverse faculty, mentors, and leaders for racial and ethnic groups (Bonous-Hammarth, 2000; Grandy, 1998). Now more than ever universities need to recruit, retain, and mentor diverse women and non-binary students with over 3.5 million computing related jobs anticipated to be available by 2026. Therefore, our objective is to expand the education outcomes for women and nonbinary students who are in college and considering careers in computing and technology. We are committed to preparing Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people with the education they need to bring diversity within the tech ecosystem. Our current pipeline program into tech has three steps to ensure students success and decision to pursue a major or minor in computer or data science.1) The first step is register for a Free 3-credit earning introductory computer science course CS 111, which is for women and non-binary enrolled students. This course is open to non-engineering and engineering students, with the intention to leverage students to add the computer science, data science major or stack on the computer science minor. Also, CS 111 applies a team-based learning approach which makes it exciting, supportive and lays the groundwork for academic exploration and preparation for the next steps of majoring or minoring with either a data science, or various types of computer science degrees. 2) The second step is once students successfully pass the CS 111 course and add the major or minor in computer or data science, they qualify to apply for our 3-week immersive paid Sprinternships designed for freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and senior students who plan to pursue a tech education and career. 3) The third step is Tech in Residence 3-credit earning course which builds on momentum from our Sprinternship program to advance gender equity in tech. It combines a corporate-sponsored computer science elective with the possibility of a summer internship or full-time job with the company after the course ends. Currently, the data collected for CS 111 shows a 37% increase of our targeted students who have added a major or minor in CS or DS.

Keywords:

Women, Students, Gender, Race, Inequities, Pipeline, Computer, Data, Science.