Expand Entry Level Computer Science Offerings

The Issue and the Potential

Of all the fields in science and technology that offer promise to women, computer science may be the most attractive. Even the weaker of our students who leave Mills with a degree in computer science immediately find high paying jobs with attractive possibilities for career advancement, even in these bleak times of recession.

Many women, including women with strong quantitative backgrounds, who pursue degrees in computer science at other institutions do not succeed because most colleges and universities do not reach out to women in computer science.

The Status Quo

Mills could fill a real niche here. We have fantastic computer science teachers here at Mills, but our FTE is so limited in computer science--3.5 FTE--that all of it is devoted to teaching the entry-level, mid-level, and upper division courses that we offer in our bare-bones major.

We have only one course on the books that reaches out to students who are not prepared to take the first CS course in the major-minor sequence---namely CS 62--and it hasn't been taught in several years. So only a small fraction of Mills students ever take a computer science course.

It is said that at Stanford, 95% of the undergraduates take at least one computer science course. They have a whole array of interesting and exciting entry-level courses to attract students (and something similar is apparently true at Harvey Mudd) . And potentially, the same could be true at Mills. But we need a combination of additional exciting entry-level courses and various activities to attract women (those at Mills as well as high school students considering their college options) to computer science.

Proposal

Identify current rate at which Mills students graduate with at least one computer science course.  Identify resources needed to achieve various target levels along a several year trajectory toward having a noteworthy level.  Be creative and build collaborations between CS and other departments where programming and related skills are or might be taught.

Related

Stanford Daily.  "CS106A enrollment reaches record high"
Stanford Daily.  "Computer science becomes Stanford’s most popular major"
New York Times 2 April 2012 "Giving Women the Access Code"
PBS April 25, 2012 "Why Engineering, Science Gender Gap Persists"
AAAS "What are the best ways to increase the number of women in computer science?"