Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Creating A Future With Female Coders; Supporting Women Through Community, Ruth Leopold

Honors College

In the last two decades, the proportion of women earning bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences has declined from 28% to 18% (NSF/NCSES 2015c), even though the proportion of freshmen women declaring a computer sciences major when first enrolled in a 4-year institution has remained stable (at about 20% in recent years)” (NSF, Retention of Women in Computer Science). My undergraduate capstone aims to lessen the amount of women dropping out of computing fields by creating a sense of community. The key components and benefits of community that I targeted were peer support, shared experience, confidence and interest. I approached each …