2/21/17 Pre-Discussion Notes

February 21, 2017 at 2 p.m.
People Present: Dominic DiMuzio, Dean Iaciani, Peter Short, Mberry Seck
Notetaker: Peter Short

Women in technology
Present - Dominic, Dean, Mberry, Peter, Palmer?

Women in Technology
There is a clear lack of women in the field, and there should be more.

Design choice bias in the medical field - artificial hearts have been developed more towards the male body and are too big for women.

Are they being forced out or is it due to a lack of interest? Societal disinterest.

Dr. Seiter: 1982 movie Revenge of the Nerds began a stereotype as males as the nerdy computer geeks. In 1982 30% of people in technology were women and after that it went down. Younger students are interested in computer science until 7th or 8th grade when it stops being cool to be smart.

Why don’t we start with Java in 128? Too many students drop it too quickly. Kids who use App inventor are intrigued because they can make apps for their phone - smartphones are starting to break the stereotype.

Women are looking to make a human impact which they think is harder to do in a STEM field.

A meetup gave a talk about an employment position and only asked girls to come to the meetup even though the position is available. This could have been because they know if guys come to the meeting, the conversation would be dominated by the male candidates.

Palmer got data on number of CS graduates for JCU, and in the first year, the division was 60/40, with the majority in women. And it has been downhill since then, including years where no women graduate in the major.

New computers were marketed towards the male audience. When Atari 800 and Commodore 64 were coming out they were advertised as toys for boys.

Outside of CS majors at JCU, people are impressed by simple code snippets no matter who is writing the code.

It’s more the way women think about CS than the way society thinks about women in CS. Change the way children are raised to think about CS than just the department/ academic system.

Are the female stigmas different in different parts of the country? The world?

High-level executives
They don’t do any sort of development.
They don’t even do the requirements document writing - they would manage the people who do the requirements.

There are multiple people between the executives and the development teams.

Our questions should probably be geared towards women in technology. She did study Computer Science.

CS 476 Projects
See the document on canvas:
-Individual
-Should be substantial (should take several months)
-Something you could talk about on a job interview

We floated some ideas past Dr. Palmer for a bit.

February 21, 2017 at 4 p.m.
People Present: Callen Therrien, Haylie Toth, Jacob Bradley
Notetaker: Callen Therrien

• Terri Mitchell- advocate of women in technology
o Vice President – IBM
• Projects in Class
o Draft proposal my Monday 2/27/17
• John Carroll Computer Science
o In the beginning, more women than men, 60% to 40%
o Psychology Major – only 3 men, all women
• Decline of women in CS
o Advertisements – men playing video games rather than women
o First marketing home computers – marketed as a toy aimed for boys, not a tool
o Underclass of JCU – more women CS majors
o Support system is harder to find when you’re the minority
o Female Computer Science Group at JCU
• Projects
o Work related / incorporate software and tools from internships
• Work Culture
o Cleveland Clinic
 Used to have a caf
 In Beachwood, lots around to do
 Dress – Business Casual
o Sherwin Williams
 Slow paced environment
 Constant change
 Business Casual / Jeans on Fridays
o Thunder Tech
 Dress – Jeans / Tshirts
 Relaxed – people listen to music all day
 Open environment – no cubicles
 A lot of natural light