Project Objectives

This project will increase the likelihood of the student researchers continuing on a computer science graduate program. The student researchers will become aware of direct applications and benefits of computer programming. Additionally, the majority of public school educators are female. This project will build relationships between the educators and the university computer science programs.

 

In the recent years, a declined trend in female enrollment in computing related courses has been observed. For example, there were only two female students out of 30 students enrolled in our major pro-seminar course in the department of Information Technology and Communication Design in Fall 2007. The hope is that the MRO-W grant can help attract more students in the future by showing computing can be fun, useful in other disciplines, and beneficial to the immediate and broader communities. It is likely that the numbers of women and women from diverse populations who continue on to graduate school in computer science will increase when more women and minorities are enrolled in undergraduate computer science majors.