 Good evening, everyone. I'm Keith Webster, Dean of University Libraries at Carnegie Mellon University, and it's my very great pleasure to welcome you to this evening's webinar. Women's History Month is held annually in March to celebrate the contributions of women in history and contemporary society. To honour this month and to celebrate Carnegie Mellon's position as a national leader in supporting women in computing, we are honoured to showcase the work of Dr. Carol Freese and Dr. Jurya Cresenpally. This evening's event draws its inspiration from the book of the title of this event, Kicking Button Computer Science, Women in Computing at Carnegie Mellon and Around the World, which tells the story of how Carnegie Mellon University developed a culture and environment in which women could thrive and be successful in computer science. Our School of Computer Science delivers one of the top ranked computer science programmes in the world, and with a considerably higher percentage of female students than the norm, now comprising around half of incoming graduates, and undergraduates each fall. As Carol has said, women at CMU are not simply part of the culture, they are helping to build the culture in which both men and women can succeed. This evening Carol and Jurya will discuss the various obstacles and catalysts that help determine women's participation in the rapidly growing field of computing. Dr. Carol Freese is director of women at SCS and SCS for all in the School of Computer Science at CMU. She gained her doctorate in the field of cultural studies in computer science from the School of Computer Science, and her research interests include the culture of computing, broadening participation in computing fields, diversity issues, gender myth and stereotypes. And Carol will be retiring this year after 20 years of work in the School of Computer Science, and we wish her a very happy retirement. Dr. Jurya Quesenberry is an associate teaching professor of information systems in Carnegie Mellon's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, where she also serves as associate dean of faculty. Dr. Jurya teaches in the areas of global systems, social informatics, the strategic value of information systems and web design and development. And her research interests are directed at the study of cultural influences on information technology students and professionals. And she received the 2014 Elliott Dunlop Smith Award for Distinguished Teaching and Educational Service. After we've heard from our guest speakers, we will be joined by one of our faculty members from the university libraries, Dr. Emma Slaton, who is our data curation visualization and GIS specialist to moderate a discussion with our presenters. Before I hand over to Carol, I'd like to thank my colleagues in the university libraries, marketing communications and external relations team for coordinating this event to the university's media tech team for making the technology work beautifully. And a particular thanks to women in history of science and technology for making the event possible. I'm sure they will plug it themselves, but please don't miss Carol and Jurya's latest book, cracking the digital ceiling, women and computing around the world, which is available at all good university libraries on the CMU campus. And if you have a moment, I'd encourage you also to check out our latest virtual exhibit by Dr. Sam Lemley Curator of Special Collections, entitled cipher disks Renaissance encryption machines, which you can find on the CMU library website. With that, it's a great pleasure to hand over to Dr. Carol freeze to begin this evening's event. Thank you, Keith. Thank you for the introduction and thank you Emma for inviting us. It's a real honor for jury and I to speak in the library speaker series, and especially during women's history month so thank you very much for this honor. Today, we're going to share our work on women in computing, based on the focus is going to be on the two books that Keith mentioned, kicking button computer science which is tells the Carnegie Mellon story and cracking the digital ceiling which takes us further into the world of field. It was our studies at Carnegie Mellon that led us to want to find out what was going on with women in computing around the world. And dovetah jury. Thank you Carol to provide a bit of background before we begin our talk we wanted to take a moment to set forward our motivation. Beginning to set the stage as to why women's participation in computing really does matter. And we see it mattering for several different reasons. Very much at the individual level, the computing field is in the professional opportunity that affords a lot of advantages and benefits and women, especially could take advantage of some of these if their participation rates were higher. At an organizational level, there's a growing body of research that points to the business case for diversity, looking at ways in which innovation and creative thinking can excel with diverse teams. And then at a societal or global level, we are facing a global skills shortage in the computing field. And in order to address that gap it's important that we broaden participation. Moreover, there's also a social good component for argument here at play as well. We'd like to share with you some statistics and data to give you a sense of what women's participation in the computing field looks like to start or to seed that conversation. You'll see here a graph that we've taken from the Computing Research Association told me survey. This is a report that comes out annually that looks at degree attainment in the United States and Canada, and several technical fields. This particular screenshot demonstrates the number of Bachelor of Science degrees obtained in the most recent study from students pursuing computer science and computer engineering degrees. There's some really positive or good things on this slide, as you can see, we've really bounced back from kind of the dip that we faced in the early to mid 2000s. However, the growth has been exponential in the last several years. And then finally the projections for next year are also quite promising. But this doesn't fully paint the entire picture. And I'd like to share with you some statistics that we find to be very troubling. When you look at women's participation in computing, the story is quite different. You can hear that the statistics I'm sharing with you are from the United States and Canada, but later in our talk, we will go deeper into some of the statistics on a global level. But in terms of the United States and Canada, stemming from that told me survey that I just spoke to women earned about 21% of computer science degrees and their most recent study. And this in comparison to just about 50% of the total undergraduate degree degrees women obtain. This is a pretty dramatic difference. If you look at underrepresented minorities and in particular African Americans and Hispanics, the degree obtainment in computer science is also quite low at only just about 3% and 7% respectfully. There is also a decline from the all time high point in 1984 when women earned about 37% of undergraduate computer science degrees. So not only is the number quite low, again, it's on the decline of where it had been in the 80s. And then finally looking at the workforce, the numbers, although slightly improved are still quite low at around 26%. So I'm going to pass it back to Carol now to share some of the experiences within Carnegie Mellon University specifically. Thank you, Maria. Yes, so we're going to start with the kicking button computer science story. Which tells a very positive story of women in computing. In many ways we wanted to counteract all the negative stories that were coming out in the media about women in tech who are not feeling comfortable, who are leaving the industry, and we had a very positive story to tell. And we also wanted to win a strong message that we wanted to get across that it really was culture and environment that we need to address if we want to make change. And by the way, the title kicking butt in computer science came from one of the guys in one of our studies, and he had said, the women here kick my butt. So we thought it was a nice title, a really catchy title to go with. Thank you, Julia. So remember the data that Julia mentioned here that 21% nationally women gaining a degree in computer science. You can see from this slide that we have 49% women coming in in 2020. We really have reached gender balance in our first year class. And we've been higher than national averages for well over 15 years at Carnegie Mellon. So we really do know that women are kicking button computer science in any undergraduate major. And what's very important. Okay, so we, we see great numbers of women coming into the program. But what's really important is that men and women do graduate at the same rate. So it's not that the women come in and then they leave, they stay and each student is tracked at Carnegie Mellon so he knows this. Thank you. And I'm going to give you a very kind of simplistic but overview of the culture 1995 to 1999. And what we see is a very homogenous community in terms of the men, many more men than women, and the men were said to believe that they dream in code. But the computer was really a toy that they wanted to just do cool things and play around with it for fun. And it was a code itself that was interesting just the code not the effect that it had the women on the other hand, wanted to do something useful with the computer. At the same time, women were not feeling like they belonged in the program, many left the program, and their confidence was often really low one woman said that it was extinguished. Now we're going to move on to 2000 onwards. We start to see a more balanced culture and environment. We still see our guys dreaming in code and we love them, of course, but we also have women who are very, very keen on programming, especially. We start to see that now the men also want to do something useful they see the computer as a tool they want to use their skills now to do something useful, the ability to create something useful. And I see that students who are kind of getting rid of that old stereotype that hung around computer science students and recognizing that actually they're quite cool and students are happy to be thought of as very geeky. So it was in that environment that women could thrive. And I'm going to now take us through some of the interventions leading to changes in the cultural environment. From 1999 onwards, the programming requirement was dropped from computer science admissions criteria. High SAT scores high math science scores were still in place, but the programming requirement was dropped. And if you think about it, if you know anything about the history of computing. It was a bias when the programming requirement was in place. It was the bias towards towards men because more boys were taking computing skills or learning them at home or in classrooms than girls. So dropping that requirement, we started to see a change in the undergraduate student body. We created various entry levels into the first year courses for students with little to no background. And we start to see, not just more women, we did start to see more women, but we also start to see those men who hadn't had that programming background. And with that, with the women and with different types of men, we see a broader range of characteristics and interests among our students. One thing we want to point out is important. The curriculum was not changed to be female friendly. It's often we haven't had that said to us that how did you change it to be female friendly, but the curriculum at Carnegie Mellon is changed to suit all students not to be just for females. And I think that's pretty well established now that that's not something you would do at Carnegie Mellon. Going on with interventions. From 1999, the Dean at the time, Raj Reddy, it was his vision to produce leaders in the field. And this was a very important moment because it was the start of institutional support for change. Without that institutional support, and without it being sustained. We believe that we really couldn't have changed changed a lot. Lenore Blom joined the CS faculty, bringing this long standing expertise and advocacy for women in science and math. And it was Lenore that actually launched the changes that we were about to see. I joined Lenore in 2000. And what we haven't mentioned yet is the development of a student organization women at SCS, which was built to ensure that professional experiences social experiences for women reflect the implicit opportunities that were going on in the majority in this case the man. It may seem a little strange to say that a student organization could contribute so much to the change in the culture, but most of people in the in the school of computer science. And we have come to recognize the value of the student organization, because it built a community community, a faculty staff, students, everyone was involved. We're going to dig a little deeper into women at SCS and the important steps that we've found for successful retention. One of all that institutional support has been absolutely critical support from faculty administration financial to help us do run programs and events, and has to fit the values and philosophy of our school, you have to believe that this could happen that women We've had student leadership, all women that come into the program belong to women at SCS, but we do have committees of graduates and undergraduates that take the lead. And the guiding objectives really is that we want to level the playing field, make sure the women do not miss out. Okay, and we also did lots of research studies monitoring making sure that the women were doing well doing as well as the men. We interview men and women and you'll see you'll hear more about that later. So one of the biggest things that women at SCS did was building this community across all years and levels. You know, every when the students come in with we were welcoming sessions we run mentoring programs, lots of networking again across all years and levels faculty staff graduate students postdocs undergraduates, a really big community of women all involved. The other thing we focused on is building professional skills, taking students to conferences and real conference experience practices in public speaking into doing practice invited speakers and often it's student to student, doing these practices teaching each other, which is very very refined to be really helpful students hearing from their peers. Another important thing we found has been outreach. We've been since 2003 we were running road shows taking student teams out to work with teachers and K to 12 kids and parents. So important to involve the parents talking to them about computer science and demystifying what the field is. Technology is a program we've had on campus since 2005 without specifically for middle school girls. And then also our CS and research focus workshop is a three day program. We want to encourage undergraduate women and they come from across the nation and in fact from around the world. We want to encourage them to think about the next level to reach their full potential maybe go on to graduate school. I've seen natural after a while that we would start another organization. The guys were starting to ask the women, could we come to your events and activities, and the women, you know, said okay so they started opening up events for everyone. But then the next step was to actually start this new organization, SES for all keeping still keeping women SES. We still think that's important women have their space, but a new broader broader student initiative, the starter with very much the similar goals. Here's just a graphic to show you some of the academic and social events that women SES and SES for all have led the one on the left there, no faculty allowed it's true no faculty allowed students get together. And they talk about faculty, very honestly they talk about courses and a very kind of relaxed environment they listen to each other. And it's been very popular with started years ago and still still ongoing. And then of course you can see some social events like Halloween and trivia night trivia nights very special. It involves again faculty staff students, and I would organize by the committees the women SES and SES for all committees. And now I'm going to hand back to Jerea. Thank you Carol. Carol mentioned earlier that research has been a component of these initiatives. And I'd like to share with you a high level summary of some of the activities that have occurred, and some of the major things that have resulted. And this slide depicts the five case points or case studies that were held over the last 15 plus years. These case studies consisted of a variety of data collection instruments things like focus groups, face to face interviews and also surveys data was collected or gathered from our undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty and staff. In the book we go through each of these case studies and then also look at a comparison or finding some ways in which themes were similar across those five different case study points in time, and we summarize them into these five themes, really thinking about the different pathways or areas for opportunity how students and in particular female students became interested and engaged in computer science. And we look at the perceptions of the field and how students have challenged some of the stereotypes thinking back to some of the information Carol said about really kind of owning this idea of a of a nerd or a geek. We've also looked at their perceptions of individual performance and learning and a culture of inclusion. There's one snapshot on this notion of culture of inclusion because we find it to be pretty interesting. These are some results from the most recent case study in 2017, where we interviewed face to face 40 students 20 male students and 20 female students at their second year in their sophomore year of study. And for that is they've had the opportunity to come in and experience the school of computer science for a bit. And then also this was a cohort that was going through some of the new curriculum for the first time. But what I hope you see when when glancing at these descriptive statistics or the bar graphs is that overall there are some very positive responses here that students are feeling as though they do fit into computer science both in terms of and in terms of their social integration. And then the representative quotes down at the bottom. We really do like those that you see on the bottom right where even just the language choice and some of the verbiage that one female and one male student. We're using to describe their experiences and SCS are very, very similar. In terms of major findings are overall takeaways. We have found significant evidence that attitudes have changed since 1999 again thinking back to that visual graphic that Carol talked us through. Secondly, we're also finding a spectrum of attitudes towards computer science. And many if not most are all of these times there are more similarities between the male and female students than differences. In the sense of belonging has increased. And we're also seeing little evidence of a gender divide. There is only one kind of small caveat or outlier with this and it relates to perceptions of confidence. What's interesting in the last several interviews we've asked the students if they feel as though their confidence level has increased or decreased since coming to Carnegie Mellon, and our female students report that their confidence has decreased, whereas the male students say it's the same or even have increased as a follow up question we will inquire about their GPA or their actual grades. And the female students are performing on parts of the male students it's really more of a perception of their accomplishments. We talked and looked at this quite a bit and we really strongly feel that this is more of a reflection of a societal issue than something specific to the school of computer science but it's been something that we would like to look at even closer going forward. In terms of a summary or some closing out recommendations that we've developed from this work at Carnegie Mellon is that we really want to stress that cultural change is key. It's not gender differences. Our studies have found that there are more similarities than differences among the attitudes of men and women towards computer science. We also believe it's important to let women, women lead the way. So just as Carol just described with regard to women at SCS. This is a way to ensure that women have a voice and that they're central to the cultural change, which will eventually benefit all be open to challenging the status quo. For Carnegie Mellon, there was that programming requirement shift on admissions, but there can be ways in which we can tweak or change policies and procedures to really improve the environment. Work to level the playing field. So look around to see where the benefits that those in the majority are receiving. Perhaps it's things like informal mentoring, access to information, professional opportunities, and then try to develop interventions or programs where everyone will have access to those same type of opportunities. And then recognizing of course institutional support is critical. Working towards gender parity requires resources. It requires buy in and support in terms of our values in our belief system as well. Dean Webster mentioned in the opening remarks that Carol and I have also completed a second book, cracking the digital ceiling women and competing around the world. And so I'd like to take a little bit of time to share with you some of the themes coming out of this book. Really, as we were looking at our work at Carnegie Mellon, we saw some wonderful examples of how women were leading the way and ways in which culture and cultural shift or changes were making a difference. And so our motivation was to look more globally, more holistically to identify if there are other places where the same type of situation is occurring. And then to go a little bit deeper underneath that and begin to explore what are the various obstacles and or catalysts that are influencing women's participation. The book itself is an edited volume. The chapters represent a range of global and cultural perspectives. We have nearly 20 different country case studies and cross cultural studies. Some of the chapters are more cross cultural in nature. The first chapter actually touches on data and over 50 different countries looking at information communication technology occupations. We have some regional perspectives looking specifically at Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and then about 12 chapters on particular countries to include the United States, Sweden, Russia, India, China, Malaysia, so on and so forth. So that first question that really motivated our work with this book was to identify or to find places where women really are leading the way. Think back to some of those opening in early statistics that I shared with you with regard to the United States and Canada, women representing about 21% of undergraduate CS degree attainment and about 26% representation in the computing field. There are some examples of places in the world both educationally speaking on the left or within the profession on the right, where women's representation is almost a parody, or even in some cases, slightly above. I think you can mind here though that even if these percentages look very promising and exciting. It's not to say there aren't obstacles or challenges that have been overcome or continue to impede some progress. And so the book goes a little bit deeper into a few of these. One of the most interesting, maybe even surprising findings coming out of this work is that higher levels of societal gender equality does not does not necessarily contribute to increase numbers of women in computing. There's little improvement between modern economies and women's participation in computing that chapter I mentioned that looks at 50 different countries and across cultural perspective. Written by Tiffany Chow and Maria Charles includes a meta analysis of women in information communication technology occupations around the world. And they did a comparison of that against the Human Development Index, the HDI, which comes from the International Labor Organization, and it's basically looking at ways in which a composite of national income, health, and education can begin to classify or organize in societies on this model of equality. So what you're seeing here on the graph is that many European countries that we would consider to be equitable places like Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Finland. And they actually have some of the largest gender gap with regard to college degree attainment and ICT representation. Meanwhile, some other countries like the Philippines or Thailand or Ecuador have very strong representation of women. Yet they have lower rankings for gender parity. So we found this to be quite interesting and somewhat surprising. Another really important takeaway and theme something that I believe we spoke to a little bit with regard to Carnegie Mellon is that we are not seeing any evidence that differences between men and women and their decisions or lack of a decision to study and pursue a job in computing. It does not have anything to do with innate ability or biological differences that in fact it's cultural factors and cultural shaping that plays the important role in informing whether or not a woman pursues an opportunity in this space. We wanted to go a little bit deeper in our session today to share with you at least four contextual examples for countries where women are sort of kicking butt or cracking the digital ceiling and try to provide some cultural context as to what the many catalysts were for this and to an extent some of the obstacles that may be playing a part as well. So we have a chapter written by Hisan at all that looks at the context of Israel, which is a really interesting setting and their work looks both at students studying computer science both in the Jewish sector and in the Arab sector. Combined women are studying computer science in high school at about 32%. But among the Arab students 40% of them are women. So somewhat similar cultural backgrounds and context in terms of proximity in place, but the representation rates are a little bit different. I'm also looking at the state of China. Overall, the number of women practitioners in the computing field is quite small. But it's surprising and interesting phenomenon then if you look at female entrepreneurs, particularly in the tech startup space, a very significant proportion of them about 55% are female. So women are playing a really important role as to why this is the case and cultural beliefs and values about motherhood and women working seems to be really important in this scenario. In terms of India, the Charles and Charles chapter gives some rich statistics again, some very promising notes and examples here. Sully Varma also included a chapter looking at some of those social factors leading to women's participation. She points to some really positive considerations, things like the computing industry has a lucrative component to it that can offer economic independence. Computing work also tends to be very clean or safe here in a working environment. It's not something that you know is more manual labor in nature. And that families tend to encourage women to enter computing, not to say that there are not obstacles, there can also be some obstacles in place as well. Things like travel or an inflexible work schedule can make it difficult for women to pursue careers in India. Phil and I were also very fortunate to give a talk a couple months back with a university in India and the Q&A portion of the conversation was really quite insightful where many of the participants were sharing with us their experiences growing up in India, and some of the challenges or barriers that they had to overcome to end up where they were. And finally, in the case of Malaysia, it seems very clear that boys and girls in Malaysia grow up not believing or having some preconceived notion that one gender is better suited to say a technical field than the other. And many of the stereotypes that we see in the US or in the West, those don't tend to hold up in Malaysia either. One other interesting kind of point or takeaway here centers around the notion of choice and what choice means with regard to culture. Yeah, of course, I think we would all agree that having choice and having control to make your choice and autonomy, those can be really, really positive and those are good things. And I have to keep in mind that this choice is situated in some type of social context. And so if the stereotypes are such that, you know, going into a computing field doesn't match with how you identify, or if the gender norms paint a picture that women are in a particular space, then would a woman really quote unquote choose to pursue it. And so we found this coming out as a theme and many of the cultural studies where as you know in the US or many Western countries where women do have a choice in a voice, they're being in many different ways leading up to those points where they make a choice that likely they wouldn't do so anyways. Whereas in some other countries, the decision to pursue computing maybe was more of a reflection of their academic performance in math and science. And so if they have performed well there in early education, then they were encouraged slash, you know, not offered a lot of quote unquote choice to pursue this area. Two last takeaways on the book is we wanted to summarize a few of the obstacles that we saw throughout the various country examples. These obstacles had some variation from country to country but we did try to kind of group them together into some consistent things. The notion foremost centered on the notion of the image of the field. So if computing was perceived as a very kind of promising positive profession that tended to to translate in a good way, but many times, the perception was not positive it was one that was plagued with some of these stereotypes and negative imagery that we spoken to and that had a pretty big impact beliefs about women. There are intellectual abilities and potential. The role of women in a family, the expectations of motherhood, and then also the support system surrounding women, if they were being encouraged early on as children by parents or later by teachers and guidance counselors. So once those who did persist and end up in the computing field if there were support systems to help them retain and stay there things like childcare or lack thereof. But I'd like to end kind of on a happy item. Some of the factors that did contribute or were positive to women's participation. And then going back to some of those early motivations that the computing field does tend to be a really rewarding opportunity with upward mobility opportunities for collaboration and creativity, economic independence. And so those were all things that were really quite positive or encouraging or leading to reasons that women would choose to pursue a degree in computing or a profession in computing. The ability for women to see themselves as a part of the field. I think there's that very common quote or cliche, you know if you can't see it you can't be it. If she can't see it she can't be it so having role models or mentors or representations of women in computing can be a really positive factor to influence their participation. And then finally, quite a bit of evidence on policy interventions and child not childhood early education opportunities, finding ways to expose young boys and girls to these opportunities to technology can also be a catalyst for their future decisions about entering the field. I'm going to pass it back to Carol at this point, and she will end with a summary some of the themes, and some of the areas that we also see in terms of the work ahead. Thank you, Andrea. So, one of the important challenges that Drea and I found in all of this work is this this idea that men and women have different intellectual potential. So we challenge that idea in order to make any progress at all. And yet it seems to be fairly entrenched in our society that men and women think differently. But there are two great books that we recommend coming out of neuroscience, which shows that, you know, the differences that we that we perceive are really developed in the culture from a very early age. We start to subtle messages telling our children boys are like this girls are like that. So we really have to work against that and it's tough because it is very entrenched in our society. We need to stop perpetuating the stereotypes. I'm sure many of you have heard of if not you read this multi million dollar bestseller from John Gray, the men are from Mars women are from Venus which takes it so far that, you know, men and women are so different in their thinking their being their attitudes, they come from different planets. It's one of the, I would say in the 1990s, one of the things that contributed to these stereotypes, because it was such a bestseller. And it rings true when you read some of the comments, but it never looks at the sources of difference, how are these differences produce. And then other other kind of stereotypes. It was the children's place that came out with some of these t shirts and sweatshirts aimed at middle schoolers you can see the one there with my best subjects if you go down to the bottom you see that the math box is not checked. And these were aimed at middle school girls. And then on the other side you see the big ideas of the boys whereas girls have to smile. Again these stereotypes I will say those parents complained about some of these and children's place took some of the t shirts off the market. So there's an intervention that you know families can make. And now we were happy to see that Mattel came out with engineer Bobby, but during notice that in a series of books that Bobby says, I'm only creating the design ideas. I'll need Stephen and Brian's help to turn it into a real game. So mixed messages there that the girl can't, you know do the work or buy a cell. So these are these are stereotypes that we need to challenge. Yes, Bobby does have a new career, you know she's now game developer, robotics engineer, computer engineer. So we're happy to see this is all can impact children's attitudes even though she still has the same figure right the same skinny body. Thank you. So I'm going to finish off here with something you may have seen before I hold about the Lego story. So in 1974 Lego wrote to parents telling them with with Lego. Just let your kids build let your kids kids do what they want to do just give them freedom, because they recognize that building with Legos help helps develop dexterity problem solving. Simple physics skills that we need our kids to get right now by the 70s and 80s. This is kind of what my kids saw when they were playing with Legos unisex box different colors different shapes. And, you know we've been encouraged to let let our kids just play just bill just get on with it. Right. So by 9 by the 20 by 2011 sorry 90% of Lego consumers were boys. This change in the market started with, you know, Lego appealing to boys, these shooting kind of played play stuff that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Lego notice there was a gap in the market because these were aimed at boys. So they came out with pink Lego if you ever saw saw that it was pink friends. But it was quite different in many ways to, again it was perpetuating that divide between boys and girls and what they did and what they, they thought. And along came this little girl called Charlotte and I don't know if you know Charlotte Charlotte's letter. But I'll read it to you because it's difficult to see here on the screen. This is in 2014 by the way, dear Lego company my name is Charlotte I'm seven years old, and I love Legos, but I don't like that there are more boy people and barely any Lego girls. I went to a store, and I saw Legos in two sections, the pink for girls and the blue for boys. All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach and shop. And they had no jobs, but the boys went on adventures, they worked, they saved people and had jobs, they even swam with sharks. I want you to go make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun. Okay. Thank you from Charlotte. That year, 2014 Lego actually did introduce more female scientists, little women figures, right into their science Legos. And in 2017, we saw more the Lego introduces its women of NASA set. So, these are interventions as you know as members of the public as families as teachers as parents as children can make and have an impact on how we address this difference in women's participation in computer science. Thank you Carol. We very much appreciate everyone attending this evening and we hope that these two books have provided some examples of ways in which women's participation in computing can be addressed. And that's by focusing on cultural change and cultural areas as opposed to innate gender differences. We recognize there's still much work to remain. And we hope that these final comments and thoughts have perhaps spurred some creative thinking or ideas on your part how we can all collaborate together going forward. I officially end this presentation I just wanted to take a moment and say congratulations to Carol she's recently retired and her and I have been working together for gosh over 15 years. And so we've basically met every week for hours on end for 15 years. And I'm just so very excited for you and your new opportunities but I am also just a little bit heartbroken and I hope that this isn't our last talk together but off chance it is it was really wonderful to be able to do it at CMU so thank you so much to the libraries for giving us this forum to come together and really share the rich experiences and research and intervention opportunities we've had together so thank you Carol and thank you everybody. I'm going to turn it over to Emma now and I think she's going to facilitate facilitate the Q&A portion of tonight's webinar. Yes indeed. Thank you everyone for attending but mostly thank you to Carol Andrea for coming to speak and giving a very insightful and informative presentation. I as a woman who grew up in the United States I saw a lot of parallels to my own experience around how I was encouraged or disencouraged for discouraged from entering the field of computer science and I'm happy that I was able to push through some of what you were talking about in terms of notions of choice within culture to come back and do a PhD that focused more on using computer science techniques, even if it was from a different angle. So I really appreciate you both providing insights tonight. Now, as Jerry suggested in our question and answer section of the evening if you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the Q&A session. And I will give you all a couple minutes to write those questions while I start with one of my own. So you mentioned a little bit about the woman at CSC at CMU program that you both are heavily involved in and I was wondering what is an achievement that you are most proud of or impressed by that that group has produced. Yeah, I'm happy to answer that question. I am proud of many things that the women in computer science have done. I really am. But perhaps one thing that really stands out is the way that they have built the community. They've been very inclusive. They've made sure that women feel welcome at all levels and years, and they've made sure that the women get to meet the faculty. They made sure that women get to meet the graduates to see the next level. I'm really thrilled at the way they've been inclusive and brought faculty, staff and students on board with so many of the programs that they've built. I mean, many of the programs are built for the women, but they've also been inclusive and built this with lots of networking, lots of work. They've built this wonderful community. And I'm proud of them. But I also think, you know, from when I talk to staff and faculty in the School of Computer Science, lots of people are very proud of the achievements we've made. So it's not, yeah. Thank you. Oh, no, that's fantastic. Drea, do you also have something that that you have appreciated about that group as well? Yeah, absolutely. I would agree with everything Carol just described, and maybe add to it the sustainability of the group, the way in which the students really mentor each other and help to transition the various programs and outreach components and the work that they do. I think it would be very easy for this type of an initiative to kind of start and then fizzle out, but it continues to be a really integral part of the college and continues to thrive and grow and expand, while being agile and keeping the pulse on current issues and situations. So that's probably the thing that is most impactful for me. I think both of what you mentioned is very key in line with what you wrapped up your talk with, which is both inclusivity and working on making those sustainable choices that are really fixed in our culture and not just something that we try to do every once in a while. So I think it's great to see that the women at CMU are taking that to heart and living up to that standard. So we do have some questions from the audience. And our first question comes from Sharon Carver, which is what similarities and differences do you see between gender issues in the SCS and the Dietrich College or really any other part of CMU? Maybe I could take that question Carol first and then you add to first. Hi Sharon, it's great to know you're here. I can't see you but I saw your name so that's exciting. I'm in the information systems program which is a part of the Dietrich College with collaboration behind college as well. When I first joined the program back in 2007, we were a pretty small unit at the time there were two faculty people and then myself and one other were hired. And we were pretty small unit to we didn't have a really big cohort of students. So there wasn't a lot of bandwidth to think about women in IS at that point. It was just sort of surviving and teaching. And so everything that Lenore and Carol had put in place as Carol and I started collaborating together. I and my colleagues would try to then kind of carry over best practices to the IS program. So for example, we recently launched a student mentoring program and our academic advisors put that together but very much looked at what women at SCS have been doing as a part of that and the mentoring program has been quite successful. We've also put in place some professional development opportunities invited speakers, again similar to what SCS has done. We've also engaged in some research projects. Beth Whiteman at the Everly Center has helped us with a sense of belonging study. I'm working with a small group of students as a part of an independent study to look at growth mindset within the IS program. I think the actions and the activities are similar in that we're replicating many of the best practices among the students themselves. I also think there are some similarities to that come to mind. We're seeing high sense of belonging, much like the SCS students. And then we're also seeing a diversity of attitudes and experiences and interests that span across our male and female students that it isn't this gender divider or dichotomy. That's more streamlined. I think that's a great perspective and good to know that the methods are being expanded beyond the SCS department. So I think it's something all women around CMU could benefit from and as well as our non binary members as well. Another question we have comes from Susie Lourich McIntyre. What are recommended actions that K through 12 schools can take to better support girls and young women who are interested in ICT in the US that you heard of from other countries. Good question. Well, I think what jumps to mind immediately is again this idea that, you know, if we if we encourage our children to grow up thinking that boys and girls and intellectually capable, right of doing almost anything we may have, they may have different and what we found was some very different social expectations, right. Some of the poorest countries, the social expectations on women were really very heavy, but they still didn't have this belief that the intellectual expectations were different, which is kind of interesting. So I think we really do need to work on that with our children and be careful teachers, parents in our schools to not pass subtle messages along. Sometimes we don't even know we're doing right. We pass these subtle messages along. And I know there's a lot of research in education that shows teachers often pick on the boys to answer questions and the girls leave the girls. You know, this is this is Susie actually I'm Hi Susie. Thanks for the question. Susie knows a lot more about this I think that the than I do for sure about the education system but that would be a challenging stereotypes again. You know challenging stereotypes is something that I think we have to be careful of all the time. A lot of schools are now, I'm hearing that they're starting their own clubs for girls. I know that we've done road shows in local schools, where we've gone out and talked to a girls club girls computer club. And they've really valued that. So I think when girls can get together that there's some evidence that you know it's not the boys in the we were told it's not the boys in the room that stop the girls it's the girls not having other girls not bringing a girlfriend with them so sometimes these girls clubs can can have a big impact on on on the attitudes of the girls feeling favorable to computing. Maria, did you want to add to that as well or Yeah, I think the part I would add centers on the conversation about making computing a required part of the K through 12 curriculum. I think in the United States that tends to not be, you know just because there's so much focus on the other areas that are required subjects and a lack of funding or resources. I did see some examples where computing was a requirement of school and it was that early exposure, whether students wanted to do it or not, would open up, you know some ideas or thoughts, another entry point, if you will. So I won't go as far as to say we need to make it required in the United States, but I think finding ways to infuse or interject opportunities within the school system would would be nice and useful. I'm going to add something to that because you really reminded me. Yeah, teacher certification here in the US is very low, not all states have that in place to get teachers certified in computer science. Students often tell me that they, they took computer science classes from the gym teacher, or, you know, somebody that you wouldn't expect right because because we're very short of computer science teachers. So I think just now Carol that being able to see yourself as a reason to go forward and be a part of that discipline, especially for computer science, which might encourage once we have, you know, a lot more computer science there will probably be more people who also want to share that knowledge and teach and so I think that's a great point coming back up to that. Okay, another question that we have is from Elizabeth Whiteman, who thanks you both as well, as I should say so have most of our questioners. For your exceptional work for CS and is graduates, are there opportunities for the community CS for all women and CS to continue beyond graduation for connection for advocacy and smashing the glass ceiling and tech. Thank you for your question and hi Beth I mentioned you in my comments I didn't realize you were here too but Beth is the expert at the Everly Center who's worked with us in the IS program on on some of our studies so thank you Beth so much for the collaboration. In terms of IS I'll let Carol speak to SCS. I don't recognize anything at this point but I like the question it definitely makes me think of some ideas. We do have a pretty tight connection with our alumni. And so we've used them quite a bit as a part of we've used some alumni as advisors and many of our project based courses. So that's an opportunity for them to come back and connect with our students. We've also incorporated some alumni invited them back to give guest talks and things like that. But in terms of a formal program or pathways. It's, it's now I would say there isn't a lot there right now but definitely an area to focus on for the future. I don't know Carol you probably have more to say. It's an interesting question because I think it's one of the issues we've talked about that and I think Lenora 1.1 to do a study of this that you know we we we produce these wonderful graduates and they've been in this program where the women have been very active and you know cracking the ceiling in the school itself but once they go out into industry, they often find it different. And they struggle a bit more because they've, they've, they've, we need to prepare them in other words a little bit more, but when they do go out into industry and find that maybe they're the only woman in their team. They just depend on the company. We've got some great companies, and I hear wonderful feedback from students, but I also hear that, you know, some of them really miss having the women around them. I think we've really pointed out we've we've also done events without without alumna, bringing them back and keeping those connections going. Yes, I think that I think that's important but I think we could probably do more. In terms of preparing them, especially the activists that we already have that could could do some what to say. And I think too that this next question might fit in a little bit to that idea of increasing activism to increase diversity. So we have one person who has a question about how you might apply the lessons and strategies you have learned over the years to increase diversity in terms of race, ethnicity and foreign students. That's a really great question and Carol and I have thought about this a lot and we recognize that our focus has primarily been on women and computing and gender, but looking at race, ethnicity or foreign students those are all really important as well. I think those five takeaways that I summarized from the story of CMU would be relevant. The institutional support, leveling the playing field, looking for opportunities for students to take on leadership. You know that those opportunities that come to students in the majority that there are venues programs interventions to make those opportunities more widely available. I think all those themes I think are consistent. How they are sort of realized or the nuances beneath them I think would, would of course matter by context in place, but as a category of things, I believe those to be consistent. Yeah, I think Maria makes makes good points there. Yeah, I agree with with that. You know, with women SCS. Yeah, we found that affinity groups, I think are very, very worthwhile. Certainly in school of computer science, we do have to work harder with different groups, right with diversity, we haven't got anywhere near where we should be. The school is starting to pay attention and I think it's that when you, that's where we began with women we started to pay attention we started to listen to the women and move forward with women, helping direct the way and I think we have to engage with minority students in that way too. We've really got to bring them on board make them feel welcome. If you don't have a good social fit. I know that research has found that if you don't have a good social fit in your school. We're going to do so well academically no matter how, you know, brilliant you are we've got to encourage our students to to to work together to build those social relationships they're so important, helping to build that sense of belonging. We want to our minority students to feel like they belong, but we still have a long way to go with that for sure. I'm encouraging that in the recent research that you have been doing at least with women at CMU in these fields that there are parodies between how comfortable socially men and women feel within the department I think that's a great success of, and part of an outcome of both of your research at CMU. So we do have another question, which is, again, thank you for speaking to want to make sure that Andrew McGee's thanks is passed along. Your surveys of and interactions with women students and computer science reveal historical or historical figures or particular moments in the past that women cited as inspirations. Yes, I mean the person who comes to mind first and foremost is probably Grace Hopper in that Carol mentioned conferences sending students to conferences, many of them have attended the grace hopper celebration. And so learning about her history and her contributions to the field of computing, I think that has come up quite a bit in the research. Yeah, for sure, Grace Hopper, I'm just trying to think of a particular names. But even our own faculty, you know, students would mention our own faculty, women, you know, as somebody they can relate to and our graduate students too, actually. I think that's actually a good segue and to not a question but a comment that we had from one of our members and Joanne Wright, who I'll just say their whole message in full thank you and congratulations on your work your books and the CS program development at CMU. I graduated from CMU in 1971 in mathematics, one of the few female students and credit CMU for a successful career in computing. Your presentation made me want to be an 18 year old at CS student again to the students out there you go for it ladies. So, I think that I think that Yeah, it's nice to know that you know we do have alumni in the room we have students in the room and it is through this very connection that we can, you know, continue to learn from the women at CMU who have done CS work both within the department and then sharing that with the rest of us as well which I know that I benefit from, and I'm excited to continue working with you all to develop across the campus. So, we do have one more comment I'll share and then we'll wrap it up because we're almost at time. So, Laura Blum will say that Jerry said one might think a student organization like women at CSC could fizzle out I think it's very important to point out that since 1999 women at CSC has had professional leadership who have supported the students and their initiatives and who have done constant fundraising support all to support all the students activities without this leadership there's the danger that the program and success could fizzle out. I hope with Carol's retirement that the program will continue. Yeah. And I definitely agree with that sentiment as well and I think I can speak for the libraries and if he has a problem with it he can come talk to me, but any support that you need from us to help in your efforts. We're definitely here to help you do and providing spaces like this to invite. Thank you so much Andrea speakers like yourselves to provide not only your own perspective on your time at CMU but also what is possible for our students is fantastic. And it's this type of community that you have provided that's leading to the success of the program as well so with that I'll say a big thank you to our speakers. I'll virtually apply. And we can bid you all good night thank you for staying so late after work on a Thursday, and then we hope to see you at some of our future library events as well.