Gaming and Mathematics: A Cross Curricular Event (Get Your Game On)

This is a post about Gaming and Mathematics: A Cross Curricular Event (Get Your Game On), a panel at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, October 2012 in Baltimore, MD.

Sharon Jones, teacher
Renada Poteat
Beth Frierson

Agenda:

• Common core overview
• What is BYOB? (The gaming software)
• After school workshop showcase
• How to build a BYOB guessing game
• Relating common core back to the workshop

Beth: There has been a big push in K-12 education to include a common core type of activity in STEM fields, including computer science. In doing common core training, we had brainstorming sessions where we investigated combining concepts in one class to another, so students can better relate what we are trying to teach them. Because CS and Math are so closely related, we decided to bridge the gap between these two related fields. We produced a review game for math, so that the math students could review for their final exams with it.

The benefit of math ability to academic performance in college computer science programs was confirmed in this study (Fan 2002)

Renada: Build Your Own Blocks (BYOB) is an advanced version of Scratch, but lets you build your own function and blocks in an object-oriented way. Students learn to solve problems

Sharon: We have been working on a CS curriculum called "The Beauty and Joy of Computing." A few different colleges have picked it up.  At UNCC we wanted to take the college-level curriculum and scale it down to high school students. We wanted students to take something away from the three-day after-school workshop that they could call theirs. Also we gave them snacks.

• Day 1: Pre-survey; play math games; begin BYOB
• Day 2: Learn BYOB; start creation of math games
• Day 3: Complete math game; play games; take post-survey

The questions were actual questions that we got from the math teachers, came from the curriculum and helped them prepare for their final exam. Students were very excited about computer programming, even if they had never interacted with computers before.

"I don't know how to create a computer game, and I came into the workshop to learn how to make a computer game." (TJ, football player)

Of the 20 participants in the workshop, 100% of the students did not know how to use BYOB or what it was. Also 100% of the participants agreed with "I am sure I can learn programming." UNCC students taught the workshop.

"It's not half-bad. I'm actually enjoying the creation of this. It's also a lot simpler than VisualBasic." (Aaron)

Now, we're going to call Antonio via Skype. Antonio learned BYOB and taught it to the other students.

Antonio: BYOB is a really good software. It's not complex; it's essentially drag and drop. It's a software you can use inside or outside of class. The students really adapted to what they were given. The whole concept of BYOB is a good foundation.

Questions for Antonio

Q: What does Antonio plan on doing after graduation?

Antonio: Attend East Carolina or UNCG to major in computer science.

Q: Have you used BYOB for areas other than gaming?

Antonio: You can use it as a tool to model mathematics. You can use BYOB for things other than entertainment.

Sharon: The whole concept of BYOB is for gaming.

Q: Have you used BYOB since the workshop?

Antonio: Yes, I programmed an algebra game for the algebra team; the teacher wants to see if we can use it again this year and see if I can make a game for geometry.

Q: Has BYOB inspired you to learn other languages?

Antonio: I am open to all languages. I will make things happen with all languages.

Renada: One of our students used BYOB to make a flash card language learning program to teach Haiti to English. So that's another way to use BYOB without making a game.

[ End call ]

Sharon: Antonio has begun to see the full circle as we've taught him different levels of programming

Beth: Learning programming through BYOB fosters critical thinking skills. Antonio has grown from an introverted person to the chair of the homecoming committee and helping with the prom. The knowledge this gives them is more than just academic.

Sharon: Post survey questions were all positive! Everyone enjoyed the workshop and found it useful.

Renada: I wanted to run a quick demonstration and give you an idea of how BYOB works.

[ Demo of prompting user for name ]

Sharon: Sounds are also really cool.

[ Demo of adding "Got Inspiration" song ]

Sharon: The kids really liked this game. [ Game with Alonso following the mouse cursor and being eaten by fire-breathing dragon.]

[ Handout of the Algebra Guessing Game tutorial ]

Beth: A computer is like a man. You have to tell it what to do, and you have to be very precise. For Valentine's Day I teach a matchmaking game. We use CS Unplugged, having students write directions to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We have class debate on current events related to technology. We use GEO boards, which are building blocks using shapes.  We storyboard the program that they're working on to draw up algorithms they need to implement. We ask the students to write an editorial article to their local newspaper or technology journal. And we have students blog on specific thematic content.

Sharon: For some sports (e.g., NASCAR) the fanbase is shrinking because they're not engaging students. We had students write letters.

Q: Can we access the algebra game online?

Sharon: sjonespob.webs.com

Q from Leanda: You guys are selling yourself short. There is an entire modeling strand in the common core. Science teachers could really apply the National Academy common core standards much better. For example, recursion is an Algebra I standard. Writing journals is nice but let's be specific. Let's focus on the math skills specifically. 

Sharon: This is pilot work. It was hard to get this far.

Beth: We have a STEM team at our school that teaches forensics. We are working on other concepts as well and working to get the curriculum up to date.

Q: You are working on getting a CS course. If you were to do that, would you use BYOB or other formal languages?

Sharon: We're using principles from a pilot project from five college called the Beauty and Joy of Computing. BYOB is one of the platforms. We're going to do GameMaker, App Developer, Alice, and web development. We did a little bit in Photoshop (even though it isn't a language). We will talk about artificial intelligence in conjunction with FIRST robotics.

Beth: We will also teach Visual Basic (.NET) and entrepreneurial courses so that students can make their websites e-commerce ready.

Q: What about visual arts as a mathematics theme? I also do a workshop with similar results, but my observation is that I am attracting mostly boys that are all excited by games and computer science already. How do you recruit people that aren't necessarily in that demographic?

Beth: We struggle with that. We tried to do a weekend workshop to try to get girls in. You have to do a song and dance and feed them and have t-shirts and try to tie in how technology affects them on a daily level..

Sharon: We want to do a workshop that is girl focused (girl power). I try to promote NCWIT in my classes in particular. That has worked really well. There's an article in Glamour magazine that ran in October of last year. I've given it to every girl and that seems to work. Glamour does blogs about fashion and they say, "Oh, I can do that."

Q from Miko: My question is related. There was a successful Kickstarter called Goldiblocks that found that narrative is really strong with young girls -- that's what they're interested in. Do you see girls making different things and what are they making?

Renada: The girls would use it more to make plays or sketch out a scene, change the backgrounds, and tell a story. The boys wanted to create war and warcraft.

Sharon: Mine loved the music. They would play songs. They liked the idea of changing the color. But I agree that it's about plays, there's lots of color and flowers. That's what I like too. But then you go next door and "BAM!" and then a red screen.

Miko: Your experience supports that.

Sharon: We took the Alice course. One of the things the instructor said is that Alice works well with girls because it's more about narrative (it's not so much about the killing and the warcraft). It's more like a play stage.

Audience member: We have a girls camp and boys camp for middle-schoolers. We used Alice. The boys did shoot-em-ups and the girls did stories.

Miko: You could do choose-your-own adventure. Like a book.

Q: As a parent, I think it's great that you teachers are doing this. I've come across a discrepancy between younger teachers who are really trying to do this stuff, and older teachers that are resistant to it. How should I get involved?

Sharon: That's my dissertation work. The majority of teachers is over 40. What I have found is that if you can show a teacher one element -- one thing -- that they incorporate in their curriculum then they will reach out to you asking if you have other ideas. I once had 25 e-mails from teachers: "Can you show me that again? Do you have any other tips?" SlideRocket. Prezzi. PuppetPals. The kids were ecstatic about it. It's gotta be free, though. The other problem is that we teachers can be blocked from downloading things, so it should be free and in the cloud.

END

What I wish I Knew When Applying To Graduate School

This is a post about What I wish I Knew When Applying To Graduate School, a session at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, October 2012, in Baltimore, MD.

Judy Hoffman at University of California, Berkeley in Computer Vision. She went to the same school for undergraduate.

Katya Gonina at University of California, Berkeley in Parallel Computing. She originally applied as a MS student but switched to PhD.

Kristin Stephens at University of California, Berkeley in Computer Networking and Online Learning Education. Her undergraduate studies were focused in industry.

Aude Hofleitner at University of California, Berkeley in Machine Learning. She did her undergraduate education abroad in France, and last year served on the admission committee.

Elena Caraba at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Scientific Computing. She was on the admission committee at UIUC for both PhD and MS, and she switched advisors in her 3rd year of PhD work.

Application Components

1. Standardized tests (i.e., GRE, TOEFL)
2. Recommendation letters
3. Research statement
4. Personal statement, for some schools
5. Transcript and GPA from your undergraduate institution

What makes a good application? This list is geared towards a PhD application

1. Research experience, or industry experience that can transcend to research life
2. Good recommendation letters
3. Transcript and GPA
4. Solid research statement

Research

• By far, the most important thing to get involved in
• Find out if you like doing research
• Find opportunities early (in your sophomore or junior year); do internships
• Try to get a publication, in any form, including a poster symposium in your school, a workshop paper, a poster in a conference, a conference publication, or a journal article
• Reflect your research interests and experience in your research statements.

Recommendation letters

• Typically professors at your university or managers from job/internship. 
• Ask, "Can you write me a great letter?" You don't want a good letter. You want a great letter.
• Find a person who knows you well
• Ask professors who are in the area for which you are applying -- and include 
• Ask early, and follow up (e.g., weekly: "By the way! Did you get to that letter for me? It's due XXX.")

Transcript

• Also very important
• Take higher-level calasses in topics in which you are interested
• Great way to explore grad school topics
• Do well in the classes you choose

Research statement

• Your chance to tell: a) Why you want to go to this particular graduate school, and b) What you want to study.
• Discuss your research or work experience.
• Why do you want to go to this particular school? Why should they want you to go there? Tell them why you are a good match for each other. Look up the professors you want to work with, and name-drop in your applications.
• Get feedback from other students that have written research statements. Then get feedback from the people writing your letters of recommendation.

Other components of your application

• Standardized test (GRE and TOEFL) -- don't look illiterate in the verbal
• Personal statement -- women in computer science already stand out, so go ahead and ride that wave. If there is anything else unique about you, use it to your advantage
• Funding -- If you have applied for funding (even if you do not know if you got it), committees look favorably on students that take the initiative to seek their own funding. NSF has funding for graduate students (e.g., NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program).

Rough application timeline

• May -- August (end of Junior year)
• Take GRE
• Think about recommendation letter writers
• Research schools and professors
• Narrow down research focus
• September -- October (beginning of Senior year)
• Ask for recommendation letters
• Write research statements
• Fill out applications
• Fill out NSF GRFP application
• November -- December
• Submit applications
• Submit NSF GRFP
• Follow up about recommendation letters
• February -- March
• Hear back from schools

Question and Answer

Q: For international students: When applying to graduate schools, how often is it that your application is rejected because of lack of funding (e.g., need-based funding)? Does applying for funding diminish your chances of getting in to graduate school?

Aude: It won't affect your chances of getting in. If you get accepted for a PhD you will get financial aid. At the MS level it's different: if you're good then they will accept you; if you're in the top 5% you may get financial assistance.

Q from Holly from University of Waterloo: What are some of the courses that you really really wish you had taken but didn't have the chance to, or didn't think to at the time?

Katya: It's never too late to pick up a topic that you feel you missed. I did not take computer science in undergraduate. If your interests change you can get back on it. It is good to get advice from graduate students in your school to find out what they feel the core classes are and who the good professors are.

Judy: If you really like something, don't be afraid to delve deeper and take a graduate course as an undergrad. It will give you a godo idea if you really like that topic, and will help you to look good on an application.

Q: When you ask a professor for letters of recommendation, do you have to tell them the list of schools they are writing the letter for? Do they have to write a separate letter for each school? What if I'm still in the narrowing-down process?

A: The professor can help you figure out which universities to apply to. You can have a conversation with your professor.

Q: How many schools should you have when you're applying?

A: I did it wrong. I applied to Top 3, and then Berkeley. Don't do just four. Remember when you were in high school they told you to apply to the really high ones, the middle ones, and the ones you know you'll get in to.

Judy: I applied to 9 schools. I think that was good. Because the schools are so specialized it's hard to know which one you'll fit in to, which one has nice professors, the school size -- you can't get a good sense of this stuff from just reading their website -- until you visit.

Katya: Apply for your dream school. You might as well. Dream school, middle schools, and safety schools.

Aude: You will likely live 5-6 years in the same location. So visit the school. If you can't stand the cold weather, don't go there, because you will be miserable.

Audience professor: Some schools will let you continue modifying your online application even after the deadline.

Q: How do you know what's a safety school, what's a top school?

Elena: I went to my professor and asked. You should apply to just one safety school. It should still be a good school but not highly ranked.

Q from Jesse from Rice University: When is a good time to go to grad school? Work experience in industry or right after undergraduate?

Elena: Some people have a hard time going back to graduate school after having been gone for a while. You go to grad school, the stipend is not that great compared to industry pay. Having to do homework. It is good, though, to go to industry to get perspective on what you want to do

Judy: Some companies will sponsor you to go to school. There are companies that will send you to school with the understanding that you will work for them for a few years afterwards. Some schools offer a 5th year option that grant you a Master's degree.

Elena: It's something you should get lots of opinions about, so that you can form your own opinion from those.

Q: Thank you for being here to give us precious tips on how to apply for graduate school. I am a graduate student, but also: Surprise! I'm here to tell us about my school. I'm from University of North Texas. We have a dozen funded PhD positions in different domains and areas.

A: A plug for going to graduate school. It's awesome and where I learned to ski.

Q: Another general question related to the admission process. Should I get a MS before a PhD?

A: Having a Master's will increase the expectation that people will have of you. If you have an outside interest, you should take 

Q: Is it good to put things that make you stand out, for example, screenwriting?

A: YES. That's something that will go in the personal statement.

Q: Should you get a Master's and a PhD in the same school or in different schools?

A: You apply to an MS/PhD program in many schools. It's possible to get a Master's in one school and go to another school in a PhD. But in many

Q: Is there anything of value in getting a Master's degree? Would you recommend it?

A: You want the escape pod. If you decide that you don't want to do the PhD, getting the Master's is a way to show that you spent time in graduate school.

Judy: If you get there and decide you don't like it, you can leave after you have your Master's. So you can apply for a PhD and know that there is an option.

[ Break out sessions ]

END

Letter to my younger self: Things I wish I knew when I first started working

This is a post about Letter to my younger self: Things I wish I knew when I first started working at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing conference, October 2012 in Baltimore, MD.

Moderator: Chiu-Ki Chan (Square Island LLC)
Panelists: Rupa Dachere (CodeChix.org), Christina Schulman (Google)

The audience in the session was about 50% undergraduate students -- and Chiu-Ki said that most of the material is intended for undergraduate students.

Christina: Learn from your co-workers.

• Read their code, participate in code reviews. Do not work in isolation if you can help it. A fancy title does not count as leadership experience; strive for something more.
• Ask about company and group processes in interviews. Companies with bad processes give you bad habits that are hard to break. Code reviews are a good sign. A lack of automated processes is a bad sign.
• Work on things you do not already know how to do. Grow your abilities. Do not get stale. 
• Even if you are the perfect person for the job, it doesn't mean that it is the perfect job for you.

Chiu-Ki: What is the difference between school and work? In school, you take courses and you do exams. You have a clear path and you know when you are done: there is an end goal: graduation. At work you may not have that end goal. It may be clear. Another difference is at school, you have an advisor and professors helping you; at work, nobody is making sure you are growing and taking charge of your career. At school, you get grades so you know if you need to work a bit harder -- for example, if you get a B. At work, you have to figure out how you are evaluated. Your work does not speak for itself. If you are working hard, make sure that other people know what you are doing. Tell people what you are doing. An e-mail, for example, saying "Just a quick update on X" or "Took me a while to figure out how to do X but I figured it out and here is the solution." Answer e-mails right away. Even if you are not 100% sure of the answer, and even if you should probably verify -- just outline the steps that you would take. As your name appears more and more in a team setting, people come to associate you as someone that knows the answers. Learn to say no. In school, you cannot say, "This week I will not do this project." But at work, you have a say in the work that you take on. Question your projects and make sure they align with your goals. Defend your position and you will earn respect with your team.

Rupa: I will tell you the lessons I have learned on how to grow yourself.

• When I started programming, I thought that writing beautiful, modular, efficient code was the key to doing well. But writing code is not enough to get a project done end to end, but getting a project done end to end is incredibly important. You need to grow yourself from a sous chef to a head chef. Be the person that glues the project together by appeasing people on both sides of the project. 
• Next, figure out your manager. Is s/he a morning person? What is her/his personality type? How will you help your manager help you? Learn to manage your boss.
• Your review. This is the most difficult and stress-inducing things in our industry. 
• First, set concrete goals for every quarter. For me, my manager and I meet every quarter and discuss my goals. You never know what might change (the market, the economy, technology, ...). If your goals are not aligned with your manager's, you need to align them. Next, find out how your project and your team is viewed by your peers, your manager, and others. Mangage the perception of your accomplishments.
• Know your review universe. Think of a Venn diagram and draw your review circles inside it. Is it your manager? The guy in the next cubicle that knows your personality? Do folks you worked with in the past have a say in your review? Network very well and understand the pieces that come together to affect your review.
• Be genuine and be helpful.

Christina: Networking.

• You have to build your network before you need it. I am not saying that you have to go out and hold a big party every other month -- that is exhausting. But I am saying that the power of knowing a friend of a friend of a friend is powerful. Then you will never be looking for a job -- your next job will be looking for you.
• Networking is about helping other people. Plan to put more into it than you get out of it. Most of the time you will be helping to connect people across your network. It's little benefit to you, but will be hugely beneficial to someone in your network. Don't be the person that is always asking for a favor -- call to say hello, or thank you, or invite to lunch. Your network should be broad and lacking in holes.
• Carry a business card, dammit.

Rupa: Negotiate your job offer

• Figure out what is most important to you. Is it base salary, benefits, vacation time, commuter passes, free food, maternity leave, location, etc.?  Rank these.  Then, gather as much information as you can about things like base salary for the position based on your location and experience.
• Keep calm. Be confident. And be really polite.

Skits!

Act 1

A software engineering position to Rupa at Foosoft.  Rupa wholeheartedly accepts.

[ Audience boos ]

Act 2

Rupa negotiates: Can you do something about base salary, bonus, vacation, stock options, a pony... Christine says no to everything and they settle on the original offer.

[ Audience cheers ]

(You asked, and you didn't get it -- but you still got the original offer)

Act 3

Rupa negotiates again, with a higher competing offer. The details of the offer are confidential.

[ Time passes ]

Christine comes back with a better offer and more stock but not as high as Rupa wants. Rupa now negotiates some more. Asks for a month of paid vacation.

[ Time passes ]

Christine offers a signing bonus. Rupa wholeheartedly accepts.

[ Audience cheers ]

More information is online at http://bit.ly/ghc12-letter.

Question and Answer

Q from Emily from Portland State: How do you go about handling competing offers coming at vastly different times?

Rupa: Rate the places you interviewed from most interesting to least interesting, and wait until you have an offer from the most interesting place.

Christine: Larger companies are aware that you will not graduate until June, so even with, say, a February offer you will not be expected to start until June.

Q from Jo at LinkedIn: I have a problem where I'm incredibly transparent about my enthusiasm. I have no poker-face. I can't negotiate. I'm just happy to do this job, and they can see it all over my face. How do I negotiate if it's so clear that I want it?

Rupa: What is your next step -- what are you trying to achieve? Change fields slightly? Set your goal and 

Christine: I didn't negotiate my offer from Google because I got an offer from Google. Just ask, even if you're crying tears of happiness.

Chiu-Ki  You don't have to be unhappy with an offer. You're just saying, "Can you do better?" Tell yourself to just do it. Ask. If that doesn't work it's a learning lesson. It's a back and forth.

Jo: This is very helpful for someone that is not a student and has gone through

Q from Jana at Columbia: What are disparities in pay between women and men like in tech, and how do you battle it?

Rupa: Go to those sites that I mentioned and find out the expected salary in your region. When you look up those numbers, put in a male name. That is one way to know what the going salary expectation is. These sites have a lot of information on the numbers and also the benefits.

Christine: Part of the reason that this disparity exists is because women don't negotiate. There is a good book called Women Don't Ask

Q from ??: It is hard for me to think about making a mistake, translated into being overly cautious. I don't want to come across as silly or unaware.

Chiu-Ki  That's the whole reason we had Act 1 and Act 2 for you. Nobody is going to say, "Oh, my gosh, she is so aggressive" for the rest of your career.

Rupa: I'd recommend that it's how you ask. Be polite. Use terminology that is not overly aggressive, but ask.

Christine: Research the heck out of it. Ask your fellow students what kind of offers they're getting and compare. Get them drunk first if you have to.

Chiu-Ki  I practiced technical questions and presenting myself as a professional by going to interviews for jobs that I didn't care for. Then I had competing offers on the table so I had some data about what companies offer. If you don't care about the job, you'll be more comfortable asking questions and making mistakes.

Rupa: You should picture yourself as male. Fight for it like a man would do.

Chiu-Ki: I tried to push the boundary and realized that the boundary was not there.

Rupa: With a recruiter it's okay to be aggressive. They expect it.

Q from Lauren from University of Richmond: Is there a limit in the appropriateness of negotiations depending on the position that you're applying for?

Rupa: If you are, say, in a state that you are being expected to work full time but will be unable to fulfill the obligations, don't lie.

Christine: Are you asking if there's a number that is perceived as obnoxious? I'm an engineer; everything is less terrifying when you have data. It is perfectly reasonable to ask what is the range for this position, when you apply.

Rupa: Go to GlassDoor.com and read reviews on what companies are like to work for. Look up the atmosphere for the group as well.

Q from Liz from ?? College: What would you tell someone that's entering the job market for the first time, that doesn't know what to get into?

Christine: It is hard to give a blanket statement. Work with people that know more than you do. The good thing about a start-up is that you have to do everything. In one place, I had to build my own desk; in some places, there are people that keep your computer running.

Rupa: My personal recommendation is, unless you are super entrepreneurial right off the bat, I would recommend a slightly mid-sized company so that you can learn the ropes. Once you learn the ropes, you can switch into a start-up where you have to know the ropes day one.

Chiu-Ki: My take on this? Internships. That's what they're for. Do one at a big company and do one at a start-up; then you have data.

Q from June from Indiana University of Wilmington: ???

Christine: Ask the company how many shares they have standing and what their valuation is. Do not believe them when they say their stock will split many times when they go public.

Q from ??: How do you balance being aggressive with being diplomatic?

Christine: Own your inner bitch.

[ Applause ]

Chiu-Ki: Most of us are leaning toward the non-aggressive side. It will be a long time before you become a bitch. You don't wake up in the morning and go, "Am I bitchy today?" Unless you have been told that, it is not a valid concern.

Q from ??: What is a polite way to reject an offer?

Rupa: I had 45 interviews in 3 months. I would talk to the recruiter and say, "I am very sorry, I have a competing offer that I just cannot refuse. You understand; the market is really hot. I would like you to keep me in mind and I hope we can talk again at a later point."

END

Reblogged: How to have a baby in graduate school

Having babies in grad school: what do you need to make it work? This article was published in ACM-W Winter 2011 newsletter, written by three women grad students (two with children, one without). The article highlights why graduate school is an excellent time to have a child, and outlines strategies for success. I reblog it here with permission from the editor, and include tags which link it to the associated Birds of a Feather session at Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing 2011.


A. Holloway, C. Sadowski and L. Vega. Babies in Graduate School: Making It Happen. ACM-W CIS Newsletter: Celebrating, Informing, & Supporting Women in Computing, 2011. 3.


Babies in Graduate School: Making it Happen
by Alexandra Holloway, Caitlin Sadowski, and Laurian Vega
{fire,supertri}@soe.ucsc.edu, laurian@vt.edu

Abstract
There is never a perfect time to have a baby, but the present is always a good time. For women in graduate school, pregnancy and child-rearing present unique opportunities and challenges. In this article, we discuss ongoing perceptions about mothers in academia, including common prejudices and preconceptions. Although certain trends are helping mothers pursue a tenure-track position or re-enter the work force after starting a family, key challenges still exist for starting a family in graduate school. These challenges include maintaining both good interpersonal relations between partners and good professional relations within our graduate departments. We propose a checklist of the key ingredients for success in childbirth in graduate school—the things we found most important in our own and others’ experiences for starting a family early in academia.

Background
Motherhood is a crosscutting concern for women spanning economic, religious, and cultural groups. A known problem is the “motherhood penalty:” mothers are rated as less competent and committed to paid work than non-mothers, are given less slack about being late, and may be offered a lower starting salary [1]. In fact, within particular demographics the pay gap between mothers and non-mothers is larger than the pay gap between women and men [2].

These challenges are particularly disparaging due to their inequity; children provide a benefit for men and a penalty for women. Fathers are rated as more committed than non-fathers, are given more slack about being late, and may be offered a higher starting salary [1]. In academia, men with young babies are 38% more likely than women with young babies to achieve tenure [7]. Perhaps a partial reason for this difference is the social expectations about who will care for children. For example, a survey of more than 440 faculty in the University of California system found that women with children spend almost twice as many hours per week acting as caregivers than men [7].

Taken together, all of these statistics present a daunting picture for a women thinking about, or starting to venture into, motherhood. Recognizing the problem and educating co-workers is the first step to combating these biases against mothers. Furthermore, research has demonstrated that a mother’s ability to do science does not disappear after having a child. For example, a 2004 survey of German postdocs found that there was not a difference in scientific productivity between scientist mothers and female scientist non-mothers [5]. A similar study looking at working mothers across disciplines in the Netherlands also did not find a productivity difference between mothers and non-mothers [10]. Additionally, working mothers have been shown to have better physical and mental health, higher self-esteem, and financial stability [11].

Much of the difficulty with academia and motherhood is due to the fact that it is difficult to re-enter the pipeline once a woman drops out of the academic workforce [6, 7]. If time is taken off because of a difficult pregnancy or even just to spend time with a young infant, it can be challenging to return to academia. Some programs, such as British Daphne Jackson Fellowships, exist to help female scientists return to the pipeline after taking a leave of absence [5]. Unfortunately, programs to support mothers are not mandatory—not even paid maternity leave. Given the problems apparent at all stages in the academic pipeline, graduate school may be a particularly good time to have children before entering the tenure race.

Recently, awareness has increased of the challenges of combining motherhood with a career in academia as a whole and science in particular [3, 8]. Universities and organizations are taking some steps to improve the position of women who want to combine motherhood with a career in science. Part-time and “stop-the-clock” tenure-track options, which provide additional time before tenure reviews, are becoming more popular [5]. Progress is being made to change the landscape of women in academia.

We present this article for two purposes. The first is to start engaging in the discussions about motherhood in computer science. The second is to raise awareness on aspects of motherhood as a graduate student. With many female graduate students lacking female academic role models (not to mention role models who have children or who are pregnant), computer science as a field is particularly prone to the biases discussed above. To help raise awareness, in this article we describe personal experiences with motherhood in computer science graduate school. We start by discussing problems for women in graduate school, and then provide advice and personal experience on how we combated these problems. We then consider how computer science as a field can respond to—and support—parents in graduate school.

Time Is Ticking
Women in computer science are a rare breed.  Mothers in computer science, at any stage of academia, are an even rarer occurrence. One large problem for any woman in academia having a child is the lack of communal knowledge about and support for this life-changing phase. Computer Science departments may be particularly prone to this problem, particularly at the graduate school level. For example, when one author when told her department chair that she was pregnant and needed to change teaching assignments, the response was not one of congratulations, nor condemnation—but more one of confusion: “What? Students can get pregnant?”

Graduate school involves unique time pressures.  Three considerations in graduate student family life are personal relationships, financial challenges, and the ticking biological clock. We do not have any magic bullets, but we do have key considerations we wish that someone had passed on to us when our babies were “loading.”

Time == Love
Few graduate students strictly adhere to a nine-to-five schedule.  Instead, we work in the evenings, nights, and weekends, playing a careful balancing game between work and personal life. This can lead to multitasking and unclear divisions between work and home life: while our code is compiling we may be heating up a bottle, running a load of laundry down to the washer, or quickly uploading baby pictures. Time is precious, and given how little of it is available, finding time to spend with a romantic partner can be vital. Given that leisure time spent with a significant other is already limited, how can we find the additional time to devote to a baby? Will having a child put too much stress on our adult relationship?

Grad_school != money
Graduate student research assistants are compensated by university fees and a living wage stipend, which is less than minimum wage when factoring in the long hours spent working.  In a family composed of two graduate students and no outside support, money can be stretched thin.  According to the National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies, child care for infants or toddlers costs between $4,388 and $14,647 per year [12]. To put this within the range of the authors’ graduate stipend, child care alone costs  half of our pay, without even accounting for the additional costs of having a child. We ask ourselves: How can we find the money to have a baby?

Time –= 1
For many graduate students, the refrain is the same: “I will wait until my Ph. D. to have children.”  Then: “I will wait until I have a faculty position.”  Then: “I will wait until tenure.”  For men as well as for women, advanced age can contribute to decreased fertility [13,14], a more complicated pregnancy and birth [15], and other possible complications.  Further, it can take some time—in some cases, as long as a year or more—to become pregnant; then, once pregnant, the normal side effects of pregnancy, such as nausea and fatigue, can negatively affect job performance. How long should we wait to have a baby?  How can can we make time to have a child?

Why Grad School?
With these very compelling constraints, why is graduate school a good time to have a baby?  First, a graduate student’s schedule is malleable.  Especially after coursework is complete, a research schedule is generally flexible, allowing the student to work around the baby’s schedule (and the parents to work around each others’ schedules).  Not all universities support tenure programs like stop-the-clock, nor do all employers support extended time off after giving birth. However, it is possible to take a semester off after having a child.

Second, graduate students have youth—hence, energy and creativity—on their side.  A young person can adapt to circumstantial challenges and can overcome obstacles more easily.  Moreover, grad students are surrounded by equally young peers who can help with occasional, free babysitting to let a new mom (or dad) study or sleep. If the grad student’s parents are available, they are also likely to be younger, making it easier for them to travel and lend a hand.

Third, a grad student’s support network is more flexible. Whether due to pregnancy complications or postpartum mayhem, changing teaching assignments formally within the department, or trading schedules with a peer informally, can be easy as a graduate student.

Finally, we answer a question with a question: Why wait?

Strategies for Success
Having a new baby can be a rewarding yet challenging time for any family. In the first months, the parents are up throughout the night, frequently as often as every two hours—and that is if everything is all right.  Meanwhile, meals need to be made, the house needs to be cleaned, and, perhaps most importantly, graduate work needs to move forward.  These are the ingredients we have found to be key in making childbearing in graduate school a reality.

A Supportive Advisor
An advisor that supports his or her student’s decision, both in word and in deed, to have a baby is a keeper.  The support can be as mild as suggesting ways in which to make sure classes are completed prior to the birth of the child; providing a flexible schedule to allow the student to work in the time between infant feedings; relaxing the deadlines, understanding that the student’s probable decrease in productivity is temporary (although one atypical new mom reported clocking in 80 hours the week after giving birth to twin girls).  One progressive advisor suggested to her student that she Skype in to all of her classes after giving birth, and allowed all work to be completed from home.

If your advisor seems cool to the fact, ask outright about his or her feelings about your impending motherhood.  The battle over work responsibilities will not stop at the baby’s birth but will continue until either you graduate or you move to a different advisor.  If your advisor assumes you will continue producing at the pre-pregnancy level without missing a beat, one of you may end up disappointed.  Think proactively.

Adequate Me-Time
With all the work that is waiting, it is easy to lose focus of what is also important: You. Not to make having a child seem insurmountable, but there are times when your child is first born when time feels like the enemy. There is just not enough of it to sleep, work, and eat. This lack of time can lead to the malaise that overworking and under-sleeping induces. There are two things that can help you re-charge and re-focus. The first is spending time telling people objectively how cute your kid is, and breathing in the new-baby smell of your kid’s hair. The second is taking time for yourself. Find time to read a book, go on a walk, play video games, go to the gym, or do whatever it is you need to do to recharge.

Although it may be difficult, realize that there are times where you might have to put your career first. There are times when your kid is sick, and he really wants to be held, but you have to get that paper edited by midnight. For one of the authors, her baby boy had just had surgery for ear-tubes earlier that day, but because there was an important networking event that night, she had to leave her child with her partner. There will be conflicts between your career and your family. Knowing that sometimes it is okay to put your career first can help with this dichotomy.

An Amazing Partner
A pinch of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If a partner is involved, having an honest conversation with him or her, in advance, about what is expected postpartum can smooth the new-parent transition. Who is going to do the laundry? change midnight diapers? go grocery shopping? If no partner is involved, the bright side is that there will be no conflict about who will do all of these things. There is not any way that you can prepare for everything before the baby comes, but setting expectations will help. For one of the authors, having a partner who understood that she might be a mom, but her career was important, made a large difference. This meant talking about how soon she might want to return to work, what child care options were available, visiting the child care centers together, and setting some ground rules. Those rules included who pays certain bills, who gets to work which nights late, who stays home when the child is sick, and who does the grocery shopping.  If a partner is not responsive to talking about these issues, parenthood, in general, can become very difficult.

A second benefit of an amazing partner is having someone who values your experience. The shock of being walked in on while expressing milk with a breast pump in a mostly male department is, to put it mildly, upsetting. Or, when people start asking you if you are planning on staying in graduate school now that you are pregnant (because pregnant women should be barefoot and cooking), you need someone at home who will let you express your feelings and then help you react. Or, when you get told for what feels like the hundredth time that, “You must have a very supportive partner,” and you realize that a man in the same position would not get told the same thing, a discussion with your partner about the (hopefully unconsciously) biased workplace is key for your own sanity.

Trustworthy Child Care
You can’t start code-slinging again when you literally have your baby in a sling. Find someone that you can trust your child with, even if it is for only a few hours.  Trust is the key part in that sentence: check with friends, listservs, and websites  for good home care, child care centers, and nanny shares.  Talk to pregnant women; talk to both men and women swinging their toddlers in the park.  They face the same decisions, and have probably investigated some of the same, or different, options.  One point of advice, though: mom-networks are often sources of second-hand information (e.g., Sally says that Sue says...). Verify anything you hear.

There are many options for trustworthy child care, even though it might not feel like it: day care, live-in nanny, live-out nanny, nanny-share, au pair, and stay-at-home partner are just a few of the options.  Just because you visited a child care center when pregnant and you know that it is the right place for your child, that does not mean that in six months you will still feel the same way, when you leave your kid there for the first time. Similarly, just because you like your child care solution does not mean that your child will. Anything can happen: your nanny might move (or graduate); your child care center might close down; you might realize school is too far from the center. It is important to stay adaptive and recognize that you can find alternate creative solutions.

A Support Network
Tap into your family network: your parents, your partner’s parents, and even cousins, aunts, and uncles.  One of the authors was able to attend classes for a quarter by asking her partner to take her infant every Tuesday, and mother to come every Thursday for ten weeks.  Ask friends.  Be creative, accept help when it is offered, ask for help before it is needed, and be thankful.

Having a baby changes your outlook on life.  Suddenly, your priorities shift entirely, and it can be a bit of a culture shock to realize that you have a hard time relating to the friends who have not yet had children.  If they are interested and supportive of your life’s changes, bring them up to speed and include them as much as they like.  But also, find other new and expectant moms that can share your experiences.  Even if you are the only female graduate student you know, we promise that you are not the only mom in town. Find others who are having kids. Your ob/gyn may know of a working-mom support group, and you could ask your graduate school about any university-wide efforts.

A Positive and Grounded Outlook
As a final note in the checklist, be positive and celebrate your accomplishments as they come.  Enjoy these limited years with Thesis Baby as much as possible and keep the big picture in mind.  In the grand scheme of things, your child’s infancy and toddler years, and your dissertation years, are short.  For many working women, compartmentalizing motherhood and academia is an ongoing battle: when working on your research, you feel like a bad mother because you are neglecting your child, yet when with your child, you feel like a bad student because you are neglecting your work.  Our advice is to remember the big picture, and try not to let the guilt take over.  Being a grad student is mental exercise and is as important as having a child.  Both of these aspects of your life make you a complete, unique, and fascinating woman.

Making It Happen
One mother-professor, known to store expressed breastmilk in her laboratory refrigerator, quoted Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  The only way to change perceptions of, and biases associated with, mother-students, mother-faculty, and mother-professionals is to gently, firmly, and consistently prove these perceptions wrong.  Show the world that it can be done: mothers defend their dissertations; mothers produce quality work; mothers are incredible, productive professors and industry professionals.

Conclusion
Having a child is a life-altering event, no matter when the child comes.  However, being a student should not impact a mother’s decision to have a child. Computer science and engineering, to succeed as disciplines, are positioned to examine how to support students with lifestyle circumstances such as having a child in graduate school.  Our generation of student-mothers paves the way for student-mothers that come after us.  In this article we presented reasons having a child in graduate school are favorable yet difficult, and have presented some of the tools and strategies that have helped make our experiences with being student-parents easier.  Finally, we end this article with a request from the authors to women faculty: be the kind of role model you would want to have.

References
[1] S. Correll, S. Benard, and I. Paik. Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? American Journal of Sociology, 112(5):1297–1338, 2007.

[2] A. Crittenden. The price of motherhood: Why the most important job in the world is still the least valued. Metropolitan Books, 2001.

[3] E. Evans and C. Grant, editors. Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life. Rutgers University Press, 2008.

[4] G. Gehring. Mixing motherhood and science. Physics World, 15(3):18–19, 2002.

[5] V. Gewin. Baby blues. Nature, 433:780–781, 2005.

[6] M. Mason and M. Goulden. Do Babies Matter (Part II)? Closing the Baby Gap. Academe, November–December, 2004.

[7] M.Mason and M. Goulden. Marriage and baby blues: Redefining gender equity in the academy. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 596(1):86, 2004.

[8] E. Monosson, editor. Motherhood, The Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out. Cornell University Press, 2008.

[9] S. V. Rosser and M. Z. Taylor. Expanding Women’s Participation in US Science. Global Education, 30(3), 2008.

[10] C. Wetzels. Does motherhood really make women less productive? The case of the Netherlands. Bilbao ESPE Conference, 2002.

[11] L. Bennetts. The Feminine Mistake. Voice, 2007.

[12] Parents and The High Cost of Child Care: 2010 Update. National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, 2010.  Retrieved from http://www.naccrra.org/docs/Cost_Report_073010-final.pdf

[13] S Kidd, B. Eskenazi, and A. Wyrobek. Effects of male age on semen quality and fertility: a review of the literature. Fertility and Sterility, 72(2), 237–248, February 2001.

[14] D. B. Bunson, B. Colombo, and D. D. Baird. Changes with age in the level and duration of fertility in the menstrual cycle. Human Reproduction, 17(5), 1399–1403, 2002.

[15] E. Zasloff, E. Schytt, and U. Waldenström. First time mothers’ pregnancy and birth experiences varying by age. Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, 86(11), 1328–1336, 2007.

How to get my number at a tech conference

In technology, the male-to-female ratio strikingly favors the males.  Of course, it depends on the specific field how rough it is: game design, for example, has more women than semiconductor research; human-computer interaction has more women than systems and security.

Having just had come from Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing I was keenly aware that  at Supercomputing 2011 the ratio was not 2:2900 (I think there were a few men at Grace Hopper) but more like 150:11.  Yup, I counted, sitting in the back of the room where my workshop was being held.  Interestingly, there were five of us students from the same university at this workshop, and four of us were women.

My talk was third in a block of three, and the latter two were similar in that they stemmed from the same set of interviews and touched on similar topics.  After my talk, there was discussion in the audience, and when I rejoined my university's group of students, we began being approached by researchers interested in our work -- with comments, suggestions, and questions.

A young man, probably a few years younger than me, in a white and green graph-paper-patterned shirt, wearing dark-rimmed glasses on his long nose, and his hair cropped in the typical defense-industry fashion, approached me and my female colleague.

"I work on the very system you were studying," he said.  "I'm the guy.  I run everything, set the policy, and have tons of data on it."

"Hang on! Stay right there!" we exclaimed in unison.  In a flash, my colleague and I ran off to retrieve our business cards.  Tons of data!  An expert in the field we are studying!  This was very exciting.  I ran back to my chair where I had left my laptop and bag, grabbed a stack of cards, and ran back, nearly knocking over chairs in the process.  I saw my colleague also rushing and rummaging.  

I made it back first.  Presenting my card to him (American-style), I said, with a smirk, the first thing that came into my head:

"You just discovered the best way to get two women's numbers at the same time."

He looked at my card, and looked at me, and I could see that he was trying to determine whether what I had said was shocking or funny.  I laughed.

Just a disclaimer that it was a joke.

But if you meet me at a tech conference, now you know how to get my card.

The Thin Line: Advising vs. Supervising

This is a post about the session The Thin Line: Advising vs. Supervising at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

The panelists:  Laura Dillion has spent decades advising students at three different large universities, and spent time as department chair.  Susanne Hambrusch has experience dealing with situations between students and advisors that went from bad to worse.  She says that just knowing that a situation can occur is important.  Lori Pollock has had experiences being the unbiased mediator between graduate students and their advisors.

Can I be co-advised by two professors? Can I switch advisors?

Sometimes switching advisors is controversial both in terms of your own work and in terms of the political climate of the department or school.  Consider your own work, which may or may not move with you to the new advisor or department.  It likely won't.  Figure out if you will still have a project, and enough to do in order to graduate with a big dent in the new field.  If there are concerns (and there should be), find someone that doesn't have a stake in the problem, and ask him or her for help.  Someone unbiased can provide valuable advice.  It could be a former instructor, a graduate advisor, or even more senior graduate students.  Some students don't ask for help.  In some places there is no help.  That's where you should turn to other sources: e.g., friends' advisors, family, the Systers mailing list.

How and when do you ask about the author order and/or about presenting the paper?

Talk about it early.  It can change, but know before you invest a ton into a paper how much credit you'll get for the work.  Three possibilities are alphabetical order, percentage of writing done, and switching author orders if you expect more than one publication.

How do you know what your research contribution is on multi-authored work, and what you can present as your own work?

This is a good question in interviews, so make sure you have a well-reasoned answer: your research is your identity.  The abstract of your dissertation, and your introduction, should make it very clear the different roles.  Co-authored and multi-authored work can become "background" for a dissertation, and some papers never make it into anybody's dissertations.  Think ahead: the part that's yours is the part that you will continue when you graduate. Be scrupulously honest.

My advisor keeps giving me more work, and I want to schedule my dissertation and graduate.

Ask.  Sit down with your advisor(s), and have the conversation.  Don't wait until after you've done the additional work to ask, but ask right then.  Show your credentials: the number of papers you have, your advancement proposal which has been fulfilled, the chapters you've written, etc.  It may the case that you aren't ready to graduate, but it may be that you are.  It may be that you have differences in expectations (e.g., your advisor thinks you want to go to an R1 research institution, but you want to go into industry) which have serious differences in preparation for graduation.  You won't know unless you have that conversation with the advisor.

What if my committee doesn't think I'm ready, but my advisor does?

Your advisor is your advocate.  He or she needs to convince the committee that you're ready.  There are no hard-and-fast rules to follow: you may want to look for a mentor for an outside, unbiased opinion.

What if my advisor is a total jerk? (This question was truncated and summarized.)

Find someone that can advocate for you.  Go to the other faculty.  But don't go straight to the dean, going over the head of the senior faculty and department chair, because this can cause bad feelings and really burn bridges.  Learn about what's possible in your university and what resources you have.  Sometimes it takes intervention for your advisor to do change; sometimes you have to switch departments and get your work to count toward your new affiliation.  But get support from the senior people in the school that have influence. 

What if my advisor lost his or her funding, and has no more money?

Understand that this could very well be true: the faculty member may have thought he had secured money but the money didn't come through; he or she could have overanalyzed the financial possibilities for the quarter or the year.  Sometimes the money just disappears, such as with government contracts.  It is embarrassing to the advisor, especially when the advisor had already made plans on the money (such as by promising you funding).  Consider going to the chair or graduate director.  Take up a TAship, teach a summer class, or find other sources of funding around your department or even in a different department.

How do you transition from being a student to being an advisor?

First you have to find a job in a supportive environment.  Attend the CRA-W workshop for junior faculty in which they teach you how to be a good mentor and advisor.  Have a mentor in the department that you join, that can help you along.  Don't do it as trial an error, one student at a time. As a graduate student you can work with undergraduates in the summer on collaborative projects, and practice advising and mentoring.

Connecting the Disconnected: Improving Internet Access for the Other Four Billion

This post is about Connecting the Disconnected: Improving Internet Access for the Other Four Billion with Professor Margaret Martonosi from Department of Computer Science at Princeton University, at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Information technology is an enabler.  It is an enabler in education - for people to learn, through online courses, articles, and things in the public domain; in health care - getting an ultrasound when needed; in agriculture - the ability to find out why your crops aren't thriving; and in open and fair government - the ability to discuss politics openly with other people.

This presentation was about C-LINK, a type of  delay-tolerant vehicular network.  (Note: This vehicular network is an example of Sneakernet, though I don't think Margaret ever called it this.)


The current state of universal connectivity

Sure, the US is connected.  Over 75% of the country has wired or wireless access.  But there's the digital divide. The digital divide means that the places that need this technology the most are the places with the most impaired access to it.

The three factors influencing universal information technology access includes relevant and accessible software, using effective and affordable hardware, and have universal connectivity.  C-LINK, Margaret's project, was influenced by all three.

The problem with affordable hardware is the "last mile" problem: it is easy to connect the majority of the people, but in the last mile, you have to extend connectivity to rural or hard-to-reach regions.  This can be complicated, and costly.  In rural Africa (for example), the last mile is of a whole different scale.  So then we consider wireless technology, which is expensive, we need to think about how it still needs a wired backbone, requires ongoing maintenance, is subject to corruption or salvaging (because copper sells), and it needs political support.  On the other hand, wireless technology is leapfrogging wired connectivity (especially in developing regions).  Mobile and cellular is a big growth area and are increasingly penetrating the world.  But even though there is so much cellular technology going on, that doesn't mean that it's cheap.

Let's look at effective and affordable hardware.  Although there are efforts to build cheap hardware (such as the hundred-dollar laptop made by the One Laptop Per Child organization), it's not taking off.  It's just not pervasive -- most of Africa and Asia have less than 10 computers per 100 people.  That's even when you consider microcontrollers as "computers."  So what is the world's computer?  The world's computer is a cell phone.  About half of the world's adults own one.  There are more cell phones in India than credit cards -- and cell phones, even when they're not smartphones, are chock full of interactivity.  (Note: Can you imagine an accessible Qwiki for developing nations that works over SMS?  I can.)

Connectivity

Wired connectivity: availability is increasing and costs are dropping.  For example, transit prices in Kenya have dropped to $120/Mbps -- which are similar to US prices in 2003.

Delay-tolerant network: Imagine a big city with a broadband connection, and a nearby village.  Imagine that the village is on some rural bus or taxi route to the city.  Now, imagine that the bus has a laptop inside, with a large hard drive and a wireless access point.  People (and goats and chickens) board the bus in the village, send some requests on the laptop.  Although the laptop isn't connected to the broadband, it can queue the request and send it when it reaches the city, and bring back the reply when it returns to the village.  If the bus visits the village every 5 hours, that's a 5-hour latency -- but at least it is access to information.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon carrying tapes hurtling down the highway. -- S. Tanenbaum 

The vehicular delay-tolerant network is very low-cost, easy to deploy, and has a very high data carrying capacity.  Villagers can collaborate on their queries, and the results can be available to others in the village doing similar web searches (called collaborative caching).  The system can also be improved by clever prefetching -- the computer on the bus can be thinking hard over the next several hours about what else can be proactively fetched based on the current queries.  Clearly, prefetching all of the links on a page would be smart, but maybe so would translating a page from a local language to a more commonly-used language.  This isn't a microcontroller with a tiny cache.  This is a big hard drive.  If the hard drive is huge, there is no worry about performance loss in prefetching things that will not be used, but the overhead of not having things that may be useful is huge.


"Come back tomorrow. Your data will be on the bus."

The authors designed, built, and tested C-LINK, the vehicular delay-tolerant network, over a week in Nicaragua.  The city was Somotillo, Nicaragua -- no skyscrapers, but there was a school with a computer cluster and wired connectivity and a small, expensive Internet cafe with 2 computers.  Participants were school children, invited to come in and browse the highly-delayed web.  About 80% of the participants in the project had never used the Internet before.  One of the cool things that the project looked at is when participants sent at the same query, or searched collaboratively.  With each successive trip into the village, the bus brought back more data.  As the village's cache filled up, users' miss rates plummeted.  Data were on their computers or on the computers of their collaborators -- remember collaborative caching?  The authors found that highly correlated access patterns provided strong incentive for collaboration.  Oh, and we can evict old data or data that has not been accessed recently.  Any cache eviction policy will work here.

Then Margaret and her team considered using laptops and other mobile computing devices and, despite the worry of data loss, found that going mobile wasn't so bad.  If anything, it made for more kiosks -- little hubs for collaborative information.  Then, they found that the requests for data were fairly small, so it was possible to exploit cellular connectivity, where available.  They looked at data brought back by the once-a-day trip into town, by the 5-times-per-day bus ride, and a hybrid data retrieval mode by combining these with exploiting SMS.


Look around you

Other software that the authors found interesting and noteworthy included these.

• TEK is an e-mail-based web browser.
• M-Profesa helps Kenyan children prepare for the secondary school test through SMS.
• Ushahidi, also originally Kenyan, helps with crowd-sourcing of information.

Getting more involved

Imagine what you could do if you could alleviate teacher shortages by having better distance learning technologies.  Imagine what you could do if you could have better information flow and expose corruption in the government.  Get involved in Engineers Without Borders and attend Development conferences, such as ACM DEV 2012.  Make a company.  Build stuff!

Community College Women in Computer Science: A Study's Preliminary Results

This is a post about Community College Women in Computer Science: A Study's Preliminary Results at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

The authors present their preliminary results from studies from community college students around California, aiming to answer the question what makes community college students transfer to 4-year university?  That is: What factors determine whether community college students enrolled in a CS1-like course intend to study computer science at a 4-year university?

True or false?  There are different motivations for males and females in pursuing computer science as a major, and women just don't value computing.  The answer is false.  Men were found to have great expectations for success with computing, but there were no gender differences in how much students value computing.

True or false?  Family support is critical in choice of major and parental pressure is based on gender stereotypes.   Also false.  Family support was not critical, but peer encouragement was very important for both women and men in pursuing science.

True or false? Women's under-representation in computer science majors is due to lack of computer use an lack of computer game play.  This one is true.  Intention to pursue computer science was very important, and exposure to computing and computers (including gaming) was associated with intention.

The authors presented work collected over a true longitudinal study over two years, looking at demographics as well as social factors that may influence students' staying in computing after community college.  They sampled the students three times: at time of enrollment, half-way through the program, and at the end of the two-year program.

Women were more likely to be older, have had a degree already, have a mother working in computing, and have had a programming mentor when enrolling in the introductory programming course, compared to male students.  Whether or not a woman was comfortable talking to her professor did not affect her intention to pursue computing (and the other way around).  Women thought computer programming was like thinking.

Men had a greater intention to pursue computer science at a four-year university, were more likely to play video games longer, and have mothers with no BS/BA, compared to female students.  Men thought computer programming was creative.

How do we increase the number of women in computer science?

1) Men see computer science as creative, but women don't -- they see it as thinking.  How can we bring creativity to women?

2) Men are influenced by computing experiences, including video games, in their intention to pursue compter science.  How do we use games to help intention to pursue a bachelors (or higher) degree in computing?  How do we get gals into games?  How do we provide early programming opportunities to gals?

3) Men report that they get more support from their peers.  How do we encourage peer support for women?

And this leads to the awesomest idea of the conference:

How do we use video games (especially competitive ones) to bring early interventions to women?
I'm envisioning a League of Legends clan for high school girls!

What if... You Thrived on the Tenure Track?

This is a post about What if... You Thrived on the Tenure Track? at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Ceclia Aragon took a 14-year leave from graduate school.  In the time, she had two kids, was a stunt pilot (yup, in air shows), and worked for NASA.  When she was a little tired with the life of a badass rockstar, she finished her PhD and got a tenure-track position (she is now tenured).  She gives some advice about organic networking: It's easy to say that you should hang out with important people.  But what do you do when you're shy?  "I hang out with my friends, and now, guess what -- my friends are now important people."  She says that the life of an academic suits her perfectly because it lets her pursue the things that are interesting and to truly find balance in her home.  Jobs are more flexible, interesting, and fun at the top of the food chain, she says, and you work just as hard as in lower-level, less interesting jobs.  "Life balance works well when you have that kind of autonomy."

Magdelena Balazinska has a lot of accomplishments, but also a lot of failures: grant rejections, paper rejections, proposal rejections.  "Just don't list those," she says.  Focus on the positive.  She shows pictures of the house she and her husband designed and built, and her two children in various stages of infancy and toddlerhood.  How does she manage?  "I get help from anyone who's willing to help!  I do what I have to do, and I ask for what I need."  She flashes photographs of her husband with a baby during one business trip, and her mother with a baby during a conference in Greece where she had to present.  NSF panel in Washington, DC?  No problem -- a photograph of her and a baby outdoors with an explanation:  "You can just call in, and then nobody sees how you nurse your baby!"  Magdelena says, "I don't try to be perfect.  I just do what I can."

Following a different path, Anne Condon was an assistant professor when she was barely 25 years old -- and now her daughter, whom she had when in her first faculty job, is attending Grace Hopper Celebration.  "For me personally, the combination of the academic life and the family life is fantastic."  Anne gives some advice:

• Work on important problems, because the unimportant ones aren't interesting and just aren't worth your time.
• Communicate effectively -- and if you need to bulk up your public speaking skills, it's never too late.
• Enjoy teaching others.
• Build strong research support networks.  The research community is just not that supportive, she says.  "You might give a talk at a conference and there might be 20 people in the room, and 19 of them are on their laptops."  I think she looked at me, here, as I typed out that phrase.  Oops.
• Persist in the face of challenges; and, of course, go for it!

Natalie Jerger just finished her 3rd year review on her way to tenure.  She suggests that one of the most important things is to find a supportive partner.  Next, set your priorities.  For her, she and her husband always eat dinner together -- this is an important thing for her.  Last priority?  Cleaning the house.  "Both me and my husband are professionals.  We don't have time to clean the house.  We don't have time to argue about whose turn it is to clean the house.  Hire a cleaning lady."  Professionally, seek out and work on problems that you find interesting -- problems that you are passionate about.  Develop a support netwrok and find good mentors, those whose interests and priorities align with yours.  Finally, practice saying "no" so that you aren't stuck in a situation that you don't enjoy.

Jodi Tims, when she was 4, taught her friends about arithmetic -- that's how early she knew that she would be a professor.  Like Magdalena, Jodi took a decade to finish her PhD.  Violating all her advisors' rules about what one should do while in grad school, she worked full time as an instructor, did her academic research, and had two children.  "You just find a way to balance that together," she said.  Her advice for aspiring academics:

• Accept advice of good mentors.  This is as much about receiving good mentoring as it is about learning how to give good advice: "One day you wake up and realize, 'I'm the mentor!'"
• Don't underestimate your potential
• Focus on your students.  Mentoring your students is a form of teaching, and this is a service that you need to provide to your students.
• Know your institution. You don't have to make it work if your expectations are not met.
• Get involved beyond your institution.  This is where opportunities come from, to grow as a person and as a researcher.
• Appreciate life beyond work. Family and friends make life worthwhile.
• Enjoy the ride!

Questions were presented on index cards from the audience.

Q: How did you make the choice to go into academia?

Cecilia: In academia, you get to determine what is important.  You choose to perform research that has impact.

Magdalena: Apply everywhere, and make the decision with an offer in hand from both industry and academia.  The interviewing process is a lot of fun.  The reason I went into academia because the interview in academia was more fun than in industry.  One of the huge advantages in academia is not only that you get to pick what you work on, but also who you work with.

Q: We all know that tenure-track positions are hard to get.  Should we accept non-tenure-track positions (postdoc, industry), or hold out?

Cecilia: In 2004 I wanted to be a faculty member, but I wasn't ready (by publication count and preparation).  I took a job in an industry lab not really knowing if I would make the transition.  But I worked on making my CV look like I was an academic while keeping up in my industry job.  I wrote papers and attended academic conferences that came out of novel research in my job.  Choose the industry position or the post-doc that will be most suited to your goals. Have a deliberate plan.

Jodi: There are lots of schools out there that are not the R1 institutions.  If you really want to get into academia, consider going to lower-tier institutions.  Maybe the pay isn't as good, maybe you start on a non-tenure-track position, but keep your mind open to other options.

Q: Do you really need a post-doc nowadays to get a tenure-track position?

Anne: As someone that went straight into such a position without a post-doc, I think it's a good thing to do.  There is a maturity process that happens over that time; you meet different people and you investigate other institutions.  I encourage you not to rush through things if there is no reason not to.

Cecilia:  That's a great answer.  I have seen people that have gone straight through.  If you do it right from the very beginning of your PhD program -- you are publishing 2 papers in top conferences, you're networking with the top people in your field for 5 years -- then yes, you can get such a position.  But if you're like everyone else, you don't have the pedigree in your publication record, then yes, take a post-doc.  But make sure you choose your postdoctoral mentor carefully: they can make or break your career.  A post-doc is an apprenticeship.  You're getting paid less than you're worth.  But on the flip-side, you're getting priceless mentoring from someone that's going to show you the ropes and make you very marketable.

Q: How do you make the choice between academic offers, or between a research lab versus a university?

Magda: If you have no other constraints (e.g., personal ones), go to the best university, because you will work with better students.  The better the students, the easier it is for the faculty to do well.

Ioana: Go where the smarter people are and where there are more opportunities.

Cecilia: I put together a matrix of things that were important to me.  Vacation locations, startup package, what my family liked.

Natalie: The people.  Colleagues.  Also, my husband was leaving his job so I wanted to go somewhere that he had a choice

You have to go home every night and still be happy.

Q: Cecilia, you are shy. How do you overcome this and how does it impact your career?

Cecilia: Yeah, I am shy.  I miss important connections, and I just accept that.  I know that when I started interviewing, I did not mention certain rare accomplishments that few academics achieve, and I didn't mention my highly technical background in mathematics and algorithms.  The unsurprising feedback was that I wasn't technical enough, and I didn't get an offer from this institution.  I told myself that for future interviews, I'm going to brag, even if I don't like doing that.  I felt like I was acting kind of like a jerk, but I got offers.  It works.

Q: How do you publish, write grants, mentor students, etc., in your first years?

Natalie: At first, it was terrifying.  Teaching can suck up a lot of your time because it's the most urgent thing.  The hardest thing is to make time for the thinking, to think about problems, solutions, and what you're going to do next.  I think I messed up my first student.  And have someone in your life that can give you practical advice when you're stuck.

Q: How do you deal with stress?

Jodi: It's actually a very important question.  If you don't deal with it, it will impact everything that you do.  I have to get out and do something: ride my bike, go to the gym, jump on the treadmill.  And then I go do something else, make myself some space to think about something else.  Then things fall into place and things don't look so bad as when you left them.

Magda: I talk -- to my husband, my family, my friends.  But not colleagues.  That's why it is so important to have family and friends.

Q: Family is my first priority.  I want to be a professor, but the 7-year tenure time is prime baby time. I'm afraid that my male department won't like my priority of family dinners and baby-having.

Cecilia: Men, when they have to take care of a family obligation, they say, "I'm busy."  Women say, "I'm busy, I have to go take care of my kid."  So when you have to go take care of a family obligation, be more like a man, and say: "I'm busy."

Magda: I work and work and work, and at 5, I say, "I have to go."  And I leave.  And guess what, a lot of my male colleagues have to go too.  And after the kids are in bed I work and work and work.  Maybe I don't sleep always as much as I used to, but it works for me.  And when I need to, I do sleep.

Ioana: Having family as a priority is not a problem.  Being confident and admitting that is the way to go.  I wouldn't want to be hired by a family-unfriendly institution.  I was very open about my 2-body problem in my job search.  The places that were not very accommodating, I did not consider.

Q: What advice do you have for someone applying for a tenure-track position with a partner?  It's a 2-body problem with a similar area of computing.

Anne: I think it's good to bring it up reasonably early with the institution.  If one of you has got an interview, that is a good time to bring it up.  You may want to wait until you have an offer, but it is better to let them know sooner so that the university can work on this issue.  Institutions need time for this.  There are other options: a short-term position that can turn into something more permanent; maybe there is industry nearby.  Be flexible but know what you really want.  For the university, if you can attract two great people to your institution, it's amazing.

Q: What are you proud of that you have done outside your academic career that you wouldn't have been able to accomplish without an academic career?

Jodi: My academic career allows me to be flexible to do things like pursue mentoring with ACM-W and Grace Hopper Celebration

Anne: I got to take on many projects of national scope, such as the distributed mentor project and work through the Computing Research Association (CRA).