NCWIT and Symantec Give Grants to Support the Recruitment of More Women to Technology
Boulder, Colo. (PRWEB) January 15, 2014 -- The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) announced today the seventh round of winners of the NCWIT Student Seed Fund, sponsored by Symantec Corporation. Each winner will receive $1,000 for projects that recruit, retain, and encourage girls and women to participate in technology and computing career fields.
The NCWIT Student Seed Fund has provided $53,250 in seed funding for 80 student-run projects at universities and colleges nationwide since 2010. NCWIT Student Seed Fund projects include programming workshops, after-school programs, student mentoring, peer support, professional training, and other opportunities serving thousands of elementary, middle-school, high-school, undergraduate, and graduate students. With Symantec’s support, NCWIT was able to increase the grant awarded to recipients of the seventh round of the NCWIT Student Seed Fund awards.
“Symantec recognizes the business advantages of a diverse technical workforce and is proud to support programs that help attract and retain diverse technical pipeline,” said Charmy Ruparel, Program Manager, Global Diversity. “We look forward to hearing the success stories of the student-led chapters and congratulate the winners for taking initiative to encourage more young women to enter the technology workforce.”
“Fifty-seven percent of undergraduate degrees are earned by women, but only 18 percent of computing degrees are earned by women,” said Lucy Sanders, CEO of NCWIT. “We are proud to support innovative student-led programs that can help to maintain female students’ interest in the computing discipline.”
Following are the recipients of the seventh round of the NCWIT Student Seed Fund awards:
• California State University, Long Beach will host a Circuit Workshop that will show girls how to make a blinking LED circuit and an HTML workshop teaching girls how to build their own website.
• Hodges University will host a "Bits & Bytes" lunch and learn. Their lunch will include industrial leader keynote presentations and a programming workshop to introduce programming to mothers and children.
• Pellissippi State Community College will host an event and invite professionals from the community to share their experiences as IT professionals. This event will cater to young women and guidance counselors from local high schools as well as women who are enrolled or interested in CSIT.
• Princeton University will host various events including a Java workshop for high school students, a workshop for disadvantaged middle school students, and a hardware workshop for minority students.
• Santa Monica College will host a semester kick-off event and open house for students, which will highlight the array of career options available in the computer science field.
• University of Nevada, Reno will host an introduction to computer science seminar for women to recruit students with undecided majors as well as students from various community colleges.
• University of North Carolina, Charlotte will conduct weekly outreach programs for local middle schools using Lego kits to promote interest in advanced robotics.
• University of North Texas will host a book club based on "Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" by Sheryl Sandberg and host a Software Testing Competition using a web app called "Bug Catcher."
• University of Texas at Austin will hold an AWIT-iSchool Showcase that will be a conference for female students. At this conference, graduate and undergraduate students will present posters of their work from classes, internships, or volunteer experiences.
• University of Texas at El Paso will organize an Engineering Mixer for Women with the objective to connect female engineering students to pre-professional opportunities.
About NCWIT
The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) is a non-profit community of more than 500 universities, companies, non-profits, and government organizations nationwide working to increase women’s participation in computing and technology. NCWIT helps organizations more effectively recruit, retain, and advance girls and women in K-12 through college education, and from academic to corporate and startup careers. Find out more at http://www.ncwit.org.
Adriane Bradberry, NCWIT, http://www.ncwit.org, +1 (303) 492-5213, [email protected]
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