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Senior Allison Brown and her roommate, Kelleigh Maroney, are the only two female students graduating from Baylor’s computer science program in May.
Brown recalls challenges her freshman year in connecting with the already few women in the program, and has since made it a priority to reach out to and even tutor incoming female students starting computer science studies.
“If you don’t sit next to a girl your first day in your first class, it’s less likely you’re going to be friends with them. . . . You’re not really talking to them in class or know their names as well,” said
Brown, 21, who founded the Women in Computer Science student chapter at Baylor last year. “I didn’t even know some of the girls in my class until my sophomore year.”
Emily Sandvall, associate director for undergraduate programs at Baylor’s Rogers School of Engineering and Computer Science, also wanted to foster greater connections among the college’s women students. Last year, she launched a series of intimate talks with female students living at the Teal Residential College, the on-campus living and learning community for engineering and computer science majors.
“I basically went floor by floor and just had these conversations with women,” Sandvall said. “We played with Legos while we were talking about women’s issues in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and their experiences in the classroom, and talking about ways as a community of women all pursuing the same thing that we could support and encourage one another, and it went really well.”
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Source: Waco Tribune-Herald
