Lifelong
Links Peopleimages/E+/Getty Images
Connecting girls and minorities
to computer science
BY ALEX RYCHWALSKI
In a computer lab at the University
of Maryland, College Park, more
than 20 middle school students donning
Oculus virtual-reality headsets test
out various games, killing robots and
having a blast with their classmates.

By the end of this two-week camp
session, they will have made their own
virtual-reality games.

The students, girls and boys
from groups underrepresented in
computer science, are part of the
Computer Science Connect program
(CompSciConnect) hosted by the
Maryland Center for Women in
Computing at the university.

The primary goal of the program is to
introduce computer science to students
who wouldn’t otherwise have that
opportunity by showing them how
computer science aff ects the world,
says Jan Plane, the program’s founder
and director.

“One thing we see with women and
minorities is they want computing that
14 October 2018
washingtonFAMILY.com fi xes the world, not computing for the
sake of computing,” Plane says.

Only 12 percent of computer science
degrees are completed by women
nationally, according to the U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the
disparity is even greater for racial
minorities. African-American women
comprise only 3 percent of the
computing workforce, while Latinas
make up just 1 percent. Plane pares
down the discrepancy in diversity to
three factors: the knowledge among
underrepresented groups that they
are indeed underrepresented; societal
pressures steering children away from
the fi eld; and a misperception of what
computer science really is.

“It Never Gets a Chance”
CompSciConnect is a three-year
program that meets for two weeks
during the summer and monthly
during the school year, but for students
not in the program, the opportunity is
one that is hard to come by due to their
current curriculum.

“I don’t think I would’ve gott en
into computer science [without
CompSciConnect],” says Anushka
Ganoo, a Maryland student in her third
year with the program. “In our schools,
we aren’t introduced to it as a subject in
middle school.”
Last November, Gov. Larry Hogan
introduced the ACCESS initiative,
allocating $5 million to fund teacher
training and professional development
in computer science. Despite this step in
the right direction, the program fails to
address the biggest obstacle preventing
girls like Anushka from gett ing into
computing: Computer science courses
are not required in public schools.

Plane says many girls are turned away
from computer science because of the
lack of exposure to the subject. “A lot
of women don’t go into [computer
science] because they don’t experience
it. It never gets a chance.

“Because it’s not required in schools,
like biology is, there is a gap in
exposure. If you look at the biological