Barbara Ryder
Written by: Lauren Moore
The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) announced the winners of the NCWIT Academic Alliance Seed Fund early this week. Among the winners was Barbara Ryder’s proposal titled “Professional Development and Networking Workshop for High School Teachers of Computer Science.” Ryder is the J. Byron Maupin Professor of Engineering and the head of the computer science (CS) department at Virginia Tech.
The new NCWIT award of $15,000 will support a series of annual summer workshops offering networking and professional development opportunities to high school teachers aimed at recruiting a more diverse population of women and minority students into undergraduate CS studies.
The objective for the NCWIT award is to build and establish ongoing relationships with high school teachers in the region. The award will sponsor a series of workshops in co-ordination with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)-sponsored professional organization for high school teachers, CSTA .
The workshops will offer networking and professional development to teachers in technology and computing and provide them with information and skills on how to attract a more diverse student population to their high school CS classes. By establishing strong relationships with local high schools and increasing recruitment into technology classes, the NCWIT award will contribute to the department’s overall goal of recruiting a more diverse population of undergraduate CS students.
The NCWIT Academic Alliance Seed Fund, established in 2007 through funding from Microsoft Research, provides U.S. academic institutions with start-up funds to develop and implement initiatives for recruiting and retaining women in computer science and information technology fields of study. NCWIT is a national coalition of over 170 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits working to strengthen the computing workforce and cultivate technology innovation by increasing the participation of women. NCWIT’s work connects efforts to increase women’s participation in technology along the entire pipeline, from K-12 and higher education through industry, academic, and entrepreneurial careers.
Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. As the nation’s third largest producer of engineers with baccalaureate degrees, undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a hands-on, minds-on approach to engineering education. It complements classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 2,000 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study, including biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology.