For women in a male dominated field, peer groups can make all the difference. Being one of a few women in a classroom of 100 students can be uncomfortable, according to Chris Johnson, a professor of computer science.
Although Johnson has no first-hand experience along those lines, Darby Brown, seated nearby, confirms his statement, nodding her head.
“The women tend to sit together,” the senior in computer science said, noting that she and other women in her classes sometimes collaborate on homework.
Johnson hopes that as women complete the program, they can spread the word to younger, potential female students.
Judging by female enrollment trends, there may be plenty of room for optimism.
With marker on whiteboard, Cindi Thompson draws a downward swooping line.
The assistant professor of computer science has just made a simple visualization of a complex phenomenon dubbed with the no-less-inhibiting moniker of “the incredible shrinking pipeline.”
According to national studies, the percentage of women enrolled in computer science undergraduate programs began declining in the ’80s, sparking the fear that the growing field is leaving women behind.
Simultaneously, the proportion of female computer science students who continue on dwindles from undergraduate to graduate to faculty position.
Over the past decade, when the trend was publicized, puzzlement and speculation has buzzed about. It’s part of a question that has plagued administrators and recruiters: “Why aren’t more women interested in math/science/engineering?”
However, other fields seem to be having a little more success closing the gap.
“It’s not like you build it, and they come,” said Tom Henderson, director of the U’s School of Computing.
And while few doubt women’s aptitude, fingers point at the perception of an anti-social field, computer games targeted at boys and the uncool image of computers held by teenage girls.
The school employs three female faculty, a proportion that is about on par with the rest of the nation. Female student enrollment, however, falls a little lower, according to Henderson. The most recently admitted class is 14 percent female.
But not all female computer scientists feel they have been put on a microscope slide by entering a male-dominated profession.
For Betty Mohler, now a graduate student in computer science, it just wasn’t a big deal, even though she is occasionally at odds with others’ perceptions.
On the first day of class, sometimes the guy sitting next to her would offer help.
“Two weeks later, he’s begging me to help him,” she said, adding that female students face lower expectations both from themselves and from others. “A lot of women fall into that, doing less than they could have.”
But the social environment itself is only part of the dilemma. For some reason, girls aren’t drawn to the subject or, perhaps, the work it leads to.
“[Programming] is not a social activity in general,” Henderson said. “It’s you against the problem.”
For Thompson, however, this is a myth that needs dispelling. In junior high, girls are put off by the prospect of sitting alone in front of a computer screen.
“That’s not the way it is. We’re trying to get the word out,” she said. “I interact with people all the time. You can make it social.”
For example, she mentions work developing human computer interfaces or tutorials for school kids.
But regardless of attempts to explain the national phenomenon, there is a perception that the situation is on the upswing.
After arriving at the U in the early ’80s, Dave Hanscom, the school’s director of undergraduate studies, remembers hearing stories of high school teachers discouraging girls from entering technical fields.
That’s not the case anymore.
“The high school teachers I talk to are very encouraging to women,” he said. “They are frustrated they don’t get more girls [interested in engineering.]”
And in looking back over the past two decades he has spent at the U, Hanscom’s first impression is that female enrollment in computer science is finally recovering, after a drought in the late ’80s and ’90s.
Were this the case, it would parallel the enrollment trend outlined in two national analyses conducted by Tracy Camp of the Colorado School of Mines.
According to the studies, from 1983 to 1996, the percentage of women obtaining bachelors degrees in computer science dropped from 37 percent to a low of 28 percent. No evidence indicated a potential for increase by 2002.
But a parallel trend at the U is difficult to isolate. Both admissions and degree statistics tell a sporadic story. In 1983, the admission of female students spiked at 16 percent. The past two years, numbers have approached the same level.
Above all, it seems there have been good years and there have been bad years.
A little more than a year ago, Gov. Mike Leavitt requested state institutions double the number of engineering students in five years, and triple it in eight. This year, the College of Engineering targeted its computer science program as a hotbed for growth.
But Henderson noted wryly that if the School could just admit an equal ration of men and women, enrollment would double instantaneously.