winscape 2185

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Was it ever like that? Most U.S. undergraduate programs have some requirement that students take courses from a variety of disciplines (a little science, a little history, a little English, a little social science, etc.). What I remember from my undergraduate days (30+ years ago) is that I took a lot of those courses my first year. That's certainly how it works where I teach. A few majors do have fairly prescribed curricula, with a heavy emphasis in the first year on courses that will be needed for the major and not too many choices anywhere along the line. But freshmen who aren't in one of those majors, or who aren't sure about a major yet, are apt to focus on meeting the "one course from this area, one from that area" requirement. Further, all the freshmen are required to sign up for a "first-year seminar" like what I've been describing.

I suspect that what you're describing is more apt to be the norm at more technical schools -- I think it was like that for undergraduates at the school where I did my graduate work (all freshmen took physics, calculus, etc. -- not too many choices, and heavy emphasis on math and science, but then that (math-science-engineering) was what the school was about.

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I don't know about that. I think she may get just a little extra help -- sometimes from male faculty -- because she's a female in a discipline that is perceived by some as being hostile to women. Whether this is good for her in the long run -- it's probably not.

(As for preaching -- no, I don't think I do much of that in any context, though maybe the students would disagree, when I launch into a discussion of why buffer overflows Should Never Be Allowed To Happen.)

No, I think what she's telling me is that she's not interested in traditionally-female fluff. I think she's about as interested in other kinds of fluff as the male students (SF movies and video games are examples that come to mind, though I guess one could argue about whether those are fluff).

I understand the appeal of trying to keep CS as a field in which geeks can be geeks and not be ridiculed for being outside the mainstream. But I'm not so sure it's a good idea to extend that to "and no girly-girls allowed!" The main criterion should be whether people do good work, not whether they wear (or don't wear) lipstick, or whether they follow professional sports, or other not-relevant-as-far-as-I-can-tell criteria.

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Fine idea (about having girls do things that might spark an interest in technical work).

As for it being the same in other sciences .... I'm skeptical. I've asked the female faculty in the other science and engineering departments, and they report different ratios. I think one of the biology faculty said more than half their majors are female.

(Well, maybe you don't think biology is a "real science." I've heard that there are physicists who feel that way.)

Well ....

I guess my point is that maybe we'd get better solutions to problems if we had a more diverse group working on them. What you seem to be saying is that any attempt to do this will end in everyone wasting time on, oh, "sensitivity training" or something. I agree that that's a possible result. I just don't think it's necessarily the only one.

Forcing the best thinkers to do anything that interferes with their thinking doesn't seem like a great idea. However, as I thought you said in another post, sometimes it makes sense to "rearrange the furniture", even if it makes some people uncomfortable. One can try to minimize the discomfort, but sometimes the rearranging needs to be done. If one result is that now the pool of thinkers is larger and more diverse, that seems to me like a good thing.

This may be more ivory-tower theorizing.

Possibly. Or possibly it's a result of the wrong selection criteria being applied. If these criteria are based on mbutt-media perceptions of what CS is about, it would be surprising if the effects were *not* the same everywhere.

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Actually, there *is* a drop in the population of entering freshmen interested in CS as a major. A few years ago, we had something like 50 or 60 people in our first-year required clbuttes. This year it's more like 15. What I am hearing is that this also is "the same everywhere." The speculation is that someone has told the students that there are no jobs in CS, unless perhaps one is willing to move to India or China. Could be. In some ways that's not bad; the ones who persist are the genuinely interested, and some of those 50 or 60 were there because they had been told that a CS degree was a route to a high-paying job.

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When I say "sitting in front of a computer all day", I don't mean having the latest techie toys and using them to communicate with one's friends, play video games, etc. That's probably plenty cool. What's not cool, as I understand it, is being too interested in how the things work, or spending time trying to figure that out rather than doing "normal" stuff involving other human beings.

And while I don't say it's a good thing for people to care so much about what other people think of them, it seems to be very very important for people at the age we're talking about, and .... If they're basing decisions on perceptions at odds with reality, why not try to fix the perceptions?

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Good point. (Though I think in your first sentence you might have meant "subject is not asocial"?)

Something for an educator to keep in mind, anyway. (Now I'm asking myself what my department's majors are saying to their friends outside CS .... :-) )

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-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.