Ying Wu College of Computing Starts New Effort to Recruit and Retain Women

A new plan to recruit and retain more women as computer science majors is beginning in earnest this summer at NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing.

Similar efforts have been underway for five years, said James Geller, a professor and associate dean for research. But the push has a new tailwind in the form of a $520,000 grant from Northeastern University’s Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) which is also funding Columbia University, Colorado State University, Rutgers University and the University of Minnesota, in its first round of funding to help schools create gender equality in computer fields.

Here in Newark, the plan includes opening a drop-in center for female students, which will be located on the third floor of the Gutenberg Information Technology Center. A new staff member will be hired to track the academic wellness of female students. There will also be more female guest speakers and additional recruitment efforts will be made for female students at county colleges, Geller explained.

"We will consistently monitor performance and perform interventions at the first sign of problems. We will also go out of our way to encourage students to come and ask for help," especially during their first two courses in computer science, he said. Those courses tend to make-or-break new students — "This will be a safe space for women in computing," he noted.

"From the very beginning, before COVID hit, we were planning to start activities right after finals of the spring semester. This was coordinated with and approved by our contact person at Northeastern. … During the summer the team will be involved in intensive planning and preparations to be implemented from the first day of the fall semester," Geller continued. "There has not been any delay in the project, except for the delay in interviewing the new staff person.

"The numbers tell an important story, but two faculty members with relevant knowledge are members of the project team. They will study the project on our side and publish results. These studies may include questionnaires where students will be asked about their personal satisfaction with the computer science program," he added. "This will provide us a way to compare cohorts and document results. It will also give us anonymous input about how to make things better."

"In some of my classes there were only three or four females," recalled sophomore computer science major Yashwee Kothari, president of NJIT's undergraduate Women In Computing Society (WICS) and a member of the Albert Dorman Honors College. Kothari, from Parsippany, said her high school experience prepared her for the disparity. "There were times when I felt not valued as much," she said. "I think it would definitely be beneficial to have something, starting from freshman year, to help you."

For the 2020-2021 school year, Kothari said she'd like the WICS chapter to host a conference where high school girls and even middle school girls could attend. The group will also continue hosting GirlHacks. Events may need to be virtual depending on the COVID situation, of course. There is also a campus WICS group for graduate students, along with a women's chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Northeastern's Nate Derbinsky, an associate professor at the university’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences, is one of the CIC's technical advisers and emphasized that the grants are about taking concrete action to improve female students' success, not merely about educators studying what goes wrong.

"This is about increasing the percentages of women graduating with undergraduate computing degrees ... these aren't intended to be [research] grants like from the National Science Foundation. The idea here is you have the best practices, you have access to the funds and we really want to make a difference quickly," Derbinsky said, with an eye toward increasing the graduation rate by 10 percentage points in the next 3-5 years.

"Computing jobs are increasing at a huge rate, and that's where higher jobs and higher possibilities are," he noted. "If the difference really is just money, time and resources, then the expectation should be that you can just put money into it and expect to see results quickly."

Derbinsky said there was a rigorous process for colleges nationwide to apply and be considered for the grants, and that he was impressed by NJIT's partnerships with community colleges. The Center intends for the changes to be self-sustaining.

"We are very excited to work with NJIT," said Carla Brodley, dean of Khoury College and the Executive Director of the Center for Inclusive Computing. "In the last several years, NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing has studied and understood many of the challenges in reaching this goal, and our hope is that with the Center’s funding and partnership we can dramatically increase the number of women graduating in computer science."