Marc Eder
Thu, Apr 4, 7:45 PM (7 days ago)
to fac-meeting, staff, grads

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html?linkId=65692515

There are perhaps even some suggestions that our department can build on.

John Sopko
Thu, Apr 4, 8:05 PM (7 days ago)
to Marc, fac-meeting, Staff, grads

Wonder if the Nursing school is trying to recruit more Male nurses?
National average is about %9 from what I gather from searching.
According to this link NC has one of the lowest male nurse ratios,
%6.8. Just saying, women are from Venus men from Mars :)

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/human-capital-and-risk/gender-ratio-of-nurses-across-50-states.html


Jack Snoeyink <snoeyink@cs.unc.edu>
Thu, Apr 4, 9:35 PM (7 days ago)
to John, Marc, fac-meeting@cs.unc.edu, Staff, grads

Here you go, John: UNC Nursing had a flier “Nursing: It’s a Man’s Job,Too!”

I’m sure this question/response does not need to be broadcast so widely, but I didn’t want the thread to end on a reference to the title of a pop psych book whose author got his PhD by correspondence.



Jack Snoeyink, snoeyink@cs.unc.edu

Computer Science, UNC Chapel Hill



Fred Brooks <brooks@cs.unc.edu>
Thu, Apr 4, 9:37 PM (7 days ago)
to Marc, fac-meeting, Staff, grads

Long, but not reliable with respect to facts.  E.g., the ENIAC ("the world’s first programmable general-purpose computer") wasn't started until 1943 and was completed in 1946, according to Wikipedia.  Konrad Zuse's fully automatic, programmable Z3 was unveiled and operating on May 12, 1941. Aiken's Harvard-IBM Mark I was installed and operating on August 7, 1944.

Notice the abundance of corrections already attached to the story.  I wouldn't quote it or cite it.

Dr. Fred

On Thu, Apr 4, 2019 at 7:45 PM Marc Eder <meder@cs.unc.edu> wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html?linkId=65692515

There are perhaps even some suggestions that our department can build on.
-


Don Porter <porter@cs.unc.edu>
Thu, Apr 4, 9:49 PM (7 days ago)
to John, Marc, fac-meeting, Staff, grads

Sounds like a great topic to discuss at Happy Hour tomorrow!

FWIW, I very much relate to the issue this article and others describe
as the "implicit prerequisite" of programming for years as a kid.  I
really only programmed in my first CS course in undergrad - I found it a
really fun challenge. But several idiot blowhards kept mocking how easy
the assignments were (I'll never forget, in reference to an assignment I
was struggling with - "This assignment is soooo trivial, I was doing
much more sophisticated Visual Basic programming in high school".).  I
told the instructor I was going to drop the class because I didn't feel
prepared, and I was lucky he encouraged me to stick with it and not to
listen to the haters.  Amusingly, and sadly, the visual basic guy just.
could. not. get his head around a binary search tree or recursion, and
dropped data structures the next term.

I have told some of you this story before, but I know I am not alone
among those who very nearly changed careers over the culture in the
first CS class.

I have worked with some exceptionally talented women who have had much
greater difficulties in this field than my little anecdote.  I'm
grateful they persisted, but wish they hadn't had to.

My immediate response to this issue is to ask is whether there is room
for improvement in the ways we do business.  I take pride in my work,
and I'd like to see if we can't keep doing a bit better for each
generation of students and colleagues that come through.


Meghan Stuart <mstuart@cs.unc.edu>
Thu, Apr 4, 9:54 PM (7 days ago)
to John, Marc, fac-meeting, Staff, grads

Meg Mitchell talked about this when she came to talk here at the department. Derailment is a term for common patterns that come up in conversations about bias that shift the focus of conversation away from the relevant topic. It can be very frustrating for those who point out instances of bias, as it makes us feel that our ideas are being ignored or dismissed. Often derailing is unintentional, so I feel that it is important to point it out when it happens. Anyway, this type of comment is a standard derailing response. The following link has lots of suggestions for talking about bias:
http://www.speak-up.org/derail/#falseanalogy

"Make sure that power imbalances are preserved when making comparisons. For example, don't compare female engineers to male nurses."


Diane Pozefsky
Fri, Apr 5, 8:03 AM (6 days ago)
to Marc, Faculty, Staff, Graduate

Story from Fran Allen (2006 Turing award winner for those who don't recognize the name).  When IBM Research first created a "computer science" department, it was all women.  The men shunned the area because they didn't believe it was a legitimate research group.  Once it gained credibility, it became male-dominated.


Calvin Deutschbein <cd@cs.unc.edu>
Fri, Apr 5, 11:50 AM (6 days ago)
to Faculty, Staff, Graduate

Not to belabor the point, but in addition to the many excellent suggestions Meg shared from speak-up.org (that we can all learn from - thank you Meg!), I would encourage us as a department to step beyond simply not derailing important conversations but to begin to actively engage with material and reflect on how we can uplift and support women in computer science and other groups that have been marginalized within the department.

I would also want to encourage us to not recreate in the course of derailing many of the structural forms of oppression that have contribution to the exclusionary nature of our department, such as conflating sex and gender and ascribing ability to either, especially in a an email thread that recognizes the many social and cultural exclusionary forces, such as difficulties with retention in our field and the wide disparities in retention across gender and other protected statuses.

I know I am not alone in believing that creating an inclusive and positive environment is and should be one of the foremost goals of our department and I hope we can all work together to hold ourselves and one another accountable to that ends, especially in discussions (like this one! that should be used to uplift and celebrate women in computer science - which we do not do often enough!

Best,

-c


Kevin Jeffay
Fri, Apr 5, 12:03 PM (6 days ago)
to me, fac-meeting, staff@cs.unc.edu, grads@cs.unc.edu


Folks — I appreciate reading all the insightful and passionate comments.  But let me suggest we move this discussion off of email and chat face-to-face.  Towards this end, since we have a happy hour social event this afternoon, I’ll be there and would love to hear from any and all with a perspective on this topic.  And this goes for students, staff, and faculty, all of whom are invited to (and should attend!) the happy hour.

Look forward to meeting you this afternoon.

Best...