I recently ran across the following link:
A Campus Champion for Women in Computer Science
Which discusses a new president at Harvey Mudd College, and specifically her work in making the computer science major more accessible to women. This seems neat and interesting except... barely any details are provided whatsoever.
They mention that the introductory computer science course was split into different courses, one of which is taught in Python. Looking at Maria Klowe's webpage on Harvey Mudd she references that these steps were taken in a three part plan, and says "I encourage you to read more" but there are no obvious links on the page to any specifics.
Is anyone from Harvey Mudd that knows more or how to find out more? For example, did the increase in female computer scientists go along with an increase in the size of the program (as is implied) or was there a displacement of male computer scientists? Is the success limited to the one department, or are other engineering and science majors picking up women? I noticed the front page mentioning that Harvey Mudd was recently named the top engineering school in the US, so presumably the gains don't result from "dumbing down" the program, but I'd like to see more information.
Hm, thank you!
The article mentions breaking the intro to programming class into programming for science, programming for beginners, and programming for people with previous experience, and I can imagine that separating a class of arrogant hackers from freshmen who are interested in learning about computers, but changing the admissions process seems like it could easily divert female students from other schools, which is the sort of thing that I was worried about really.
I'd like to know how the admissions process was actually changed. (And how many women with computer sci interests had been rejected in previous years)