Pass-It-On Awards Program: 2007 Systers Pass-It-On Award Winners
Erin D.
Project Title:
Women in Computer Science at DePauw University
Project Description:
WiCS, Women in Computer Science, has a very important year coming up. We plan on building up the organization and working to recruit and retain women in this male-dominated field. With the money from this award, we want to increase our presence on campus and throughout the Greencastle community. We also want to help and support the students that we currently have in our organization. I’ve become very passionate and interested in WiCS and I really want to help our organization grow into a larger group.
Since the officers of WiCS are students in college, we are not established in technological fields, but we do aspire to enter into the computing field upon graduation. We hope to help WiCS grow and inspire other women to take advantage of the unique opportunities at DePauw. The PIO award is helping us achieve our vision.
Barbara E.
Project Title:
Hispanic Outreach Initiative with Georgia Tech and the Girl Scouts
Project Description:
Due to a National Science Foundation grant and an Atlanta Women’s Foundation grant Georgia Tech computing students have been introducing girl scouts to computing in an attempt to encourage interest in the field. We hold 1 day workshops on LEGO robots, Alice, Scratch, and PicoCrickets. We have also worked with the girl scouts at their one week summer camps. We use pre and post surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of these workshops and have found signification changes in the girls attitude towards and interest in computing after these workshops.
These computing workshops have been held at Girl Scout Camps, at Georgia Tech, and at other local facilities. We have reached many girls with these workshops but have not reached many Hispanic girls. We would like to extend our work to Hispanic girl scouts. The Hispanic community often needs help with transportation, participant fees, and meals. Our current grants did not include money for these purposes.
Jan G.
Project Title:
Give Yourself a GIFT: G(irls) I(n) F(uture) T(echnology)
Project Description:
This award will be used to attract more female students into enrolling in computer science courses. Norcross High School offers two computing classes which are primarily populated by males. The goal of these projects is to increase female enrollment in these classes through marketing strategies focused on female students and through modifications made to the classroom to make it more appealing to females. Both the marketing strategies and the classroom modifications will be based on research on the gender differences in technology education.
The purpose of the PIO application was to increase female enrollment in computer science classes at Norcross High School in Gwinnett County, GA. Norcross High School is located in a suburb of Atlanta with a student population that is 30% white, 30% African-American, 29% Hispanic, and 10% Asian/Other. Despite this ethnic diversity, the computer science classes are primarily male. Last year, there were two female students in the Visual Basic Programming class. This year, there are three females (all Hispanic) in Computer Programming (JAVA). The new Computing in the Modern World course, an overview of all areas of Computer Science and an introductory course, is 22% female. Another purpose is to encourage the female students in this course to progress into a computer programming or web design class.
This award will provide the funds to market these two courses more effectively in the school with posters and banners. The posters will include photos of girls in computer science classes, working individually and in groups. A mailing campaign will include a letter to ninth grade parents about the value of taking computing courses in high school and a brochure describing the courses and careers in computing. The brochure will have the GIFT theme and feature female students’ testimonials of their experience taking computer science courses.
Connie J.
Project Title:
IT’s a Girl Thing!
Project Description:
NUCIA (Nebraska University Consortium for Information Assurance), within the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) College of Information Science & Technology (IS&T), in conjunction with Girl Scouts, will be offering a week long technology summer day camp to girls, ages 11 to 17 years of age. Each day of the camp will have the girls exploring a different area of technology including potentially such things as: hardware components of a computer, HTML code for web development, other software programming languages, podcasting, and programming of robotics. Additionally, we will introduce the girls to available resources, such as Systers and the Anita Borg Institute, that serve to support women in IT. This request for funding is for updating our teaching tools so that we may provide an enhanced learning experience for the girls.
Celine N. O.
Project Title:
Establishing An ICT Training Center for Women & Girls in Lagos State aimed at Engendering ICT Policy & Deployment in Nigeria
Project Description:
The ability to use and the competence in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills is crucial for employability and management of businesses. Increasingly, in Nigeria and everywhere in the world, people who are skilled in ICT are more competitive in the job market. They manage their informal businesses more effectively, can interact with potential business partners in more advanced world when there are opportunities for business partnerships/prospects and are more easily mentored to use ICT to improve personal productivity and self worth.
However, many people are still lagging in ICT skills. Women and girls are the most affected due to a serious lack of means/resources necessary to acquire digital technology skills. This factor is exacerbated by the existing social problems of poverty and high unemployment among Nigerian women and girls. In fact, digital divide (in term of gender inequity), education, lack of ownership of productive assets are among the most important factors that keep women in abject poverty in Nigeria. If women and girls in Nigeria are to participate competitively and productively in the economy of the country, their knowledge and competence in the use of ICT must be advanced.
According to available data, Internet access in Nigeria is about 10 users per 10,000 population. It is estimated that less than 3% of women and girls have access to the Internet, and the proportion that enroll in computer Science and other natural sciences studies is even fewer. Compared to women in Asia (22%), Latin America (38%), and Middle East (6%), Nigeria is one of the countries most removed from the use and deployment of ICT. This financial support for ICT training of women & girls in Lagos is needed to increase their competitiveness as well as provide the needed manpower to support development.
Maile U.
Project Title:
Building Tech-Girls with Rebuilt Computers
Project Description:
Young women who come from low-income backgrounds encounter numerous challenges entering technical, computer-related fields. One basic obstacle facing high-school aged girls who show technical aptitude is the lack of access to quality personal computers. Without their own computer to experiment with, learn from, and master, these girls often do not develop the self-confidence to pursue professional careers in technology and computing.
Our nonprofit, Partimus, http://www.partimus.org, would like to partner with the Alameda County Computer Recycling Center (ACCRC) to provide rebuilt open-source computer systems to low-income high-school girls who show technical promise.