CODE BREAKERS
Initiative aims to encourage more women to seek tech jobs
ALTHOUGH 60 percent of the undergraduate population is female, just one percent choose to study computer science and tech, says Nicki Palmer, chief network officer for Verizon.
It’s a gender gap that a CUNY initiative is now looking to address.
Despite being introduced to computer science as a high school junior at Brooklyn Technical, Radhika Kalani of Queens says that by her senior year she was becoming discouraged from further study because she lacked experience and confidence in her coding skills.
“Instead, I planned to pick business or math in college,” says Kalani.
Once at CUNY Baruch, Kalani was introduced to the Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship in New York (WiTNY) initiative, a partnership between CUNY, Cornell Tech and Verizon that targets women in the undergraduate and graduate pipeline, and aims to increase the number of women working in technology.
“[WiTNY was] offering their first summer studio, during which I spent two weeks with a group of girls learning a library of Java Script, HTML and CSS programming,” says Kalani. “We built an app that would help Verizon stores become more appealing to customers. The program helped bring my confidence back and motivated me. I became very interested in creating apps and websites.”
Kalani now plans to major in computer information systems, and through her involvement with WiTNY, has landed an upcoming paid summer internship at Verizon in IT software development.
Since its launch just over a year ago, WiTNY has made great strides in its mission, says Judy Spitz, exec- utive in residence at Cornell Tech, who runs the program.
“We have grown in three dimensions — curriculum, career and community — since our pilot computer science course, called Computing Concepts, [was]offered at Macaulay Honors College (CUNY) in January of 2016,” says Spitz. The three-week, experimental class was designed as a tool for problem-solving and team-building.
“Thirty-five percent of the women who took that class showed a significantly larger inclination toward taking more computer science classes and majoring in it,” says Spitz. “We now have 17 different campuses across CUNY engaged in innovating around computer science and around the recruitment and retention of women in computer science.”
This summer, “We’re expanding our two-week summer studio sessions, too. Last summer, we had 40 rising college freshmen girls who were accepted to and going to CUNY. They were taught the entire digital product development lifecycle and gained an introduction to coding. Fifty-seven percent of those enrolled showed significant interest in taking computer science classes when they started college. We’ll run this summer program four times, reaching 200 girls this coming summer,” says Spitz.
Last summer, WiTNY also placed CUNY women in 31 internships at companies throughout New York City, including Verizon, AOL, Accenture, Citigroup, IBM, Xerox and JPMorgan Chase.
“We plan to place 60 women in internships this coming summer,” she says. While each work experience differs, “The experiences are all technical. Interns may go out as part of a team to client sites for consulting within their employer’s digital media group, for example.”
One of the factors behind WiTNY’s success is that students work in teams and focus on projects with a problem to solve that have relevance to them, says Spitz.
In the past year, WiTNY has also fostered a sense of tech community.
“We bring women together for lectures and try to develop a sense of community among them so they can create a network, and provide
opportunities for them to work on a civic challenge,” says Spitz.
For example, a Build-A-Thon was held last month in New York City to encourage female coders to learn from and support each other. Women came together to collaborate on a project called “Connect Me, Alexa!” aimed at building skills for Amazon’s Alexa device so that it can better connect senior citizens to their families and communities. The goal was to help women learn computer science skills alongside other women interested in tech while also thinking about how technology can improve lives.
“These women are serving as role models for each other, meeting professionals and developing a sense of community up and down the pipeline,” says Spitz.
By the end of this coming summer, “We will have touched close to 800 female students through our programming efforts. Over 30 companies engage with us in one way or another. Over the next three to four years, we will double the number of women at CUNY who are choosing to major and/ or minor in computer science and related disciplines. The opportunity is great. Tech jobs in New York alone are growing at a rate of 33 percent compared to all other professions, which are growing at a rate of eight to nine percent,” says Spitz.
According to Verizon’s Nicki Palmer: “New York City is the fastest-growing tech market in the country. WiTNY can serve as a national role model for public/private partnerships. This is why we’re in this.”
The income potential in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields compared to non-STEM fields is also important.
“Those with STEM-related degrees have the potential to earn 60 percent more on average than those in non-STEM-related fields,” says Palmer. “This shouldn’t be overlooked.”