As you may know, I’m the chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). NCWIT’s mission is straightforward – to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing. NCWIT has had an awesome fall, including accomplishing the following.
- Hosting a superb national meeting at Carnegie Mellon University.
- Establishing a partnership with Cisco on an awareness campaign that leverages Cisco’s national educator’s network to reach students, teachers and parents.
- Creating an entrepreneurial alliance in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation.
- Creating a K-12 alliance.
- Adding several new members to the Executive Advisory Council, including Linda Dillman (EVP & CIO Wal-Mart Stores), Charlie Feld (EVP of Portfolio Management, EDS), and Ruth Bruch (SVP and CIO, Lucent Technologies).
It’s been an honor to work with Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, and her team on year three of this incredibly vibrant organization.
Posted in: NCWITCOMMENTS (1)
First Lego League (www.firstlegoleague.org) may be a good fit your K-12 alliance. I have been a coach for an FLL team for 4 years. FLL is an international robotics tournament that uses Legos (you'd be amazed at what they do). Participants learn and use engineering, programing, research and presentation skills in a team competition.
In my state, the FLL tournament is organized by the Oregon Robotics Tournament and Outreach Program (www.ortop.org) which focuses on "reaching those who might not otherwise participate because of their race, gender or socioeconomic status." As such, they make a special effort to get girls (and others) involved.
Based on the growing number of kids that participate each year, I would say the program in Oregon is wildly succesful. Perhaps with your help, some of the outreach aspects of the Oregon program could be transferred to other states.
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