CS girls rock: sparking interest in computer science and debunking the stereotypes

  • Authors:

  • Sandy Graham;Celine Latulipe

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada;University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

  • Venue:
  • SIGCSE '03 Proceedings of the 34th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Declining female enrollment in undergraduate Computer Science programs is a serious problem. Part of the solution lies in retaining more of the female students currently enrolled; even more important, however, is increasing initial enrollment. Many believe lack of interest to be rooted in stereotypes of computer science formed early in high school: that it is a boring subject, devoid of interesting applications and stimulating only to 'geeks'. To attract high school females to CS, and to determine whether early exposure to the interesting breadth of CS and its applications might ameliorate such attitudes, a week-long Computer Science Seminar for Grade 9 and 10 girls was held at the University of Waterloo. The seminar consisted of lectures, labs and activities chosen to demonstrate the breadth of CS and to dispel the negative stereotypes. Pre- and post-seminar surveys indicate a substantial increase in interest, translating directly into increased desire to take high school CS courses.