Take your daughters (and sons) to work: and leave them there

ABSTRACT

Greetings! And no, with that title I am hardly advocating any sort of child abandonment. Rather, I am musing figuratively about the relationship between recruiting students and influencing our own children's directions in life. What do they learn when they see us at work? Will envisioning themselves in our positions make them want to follow suit? Better yet, how many friends of theirs can we bear to bring with them? And of course, will any of them want to stay?

REFERENCES

• 1: Carlson, Scott, "Wanted: Female Computer-Science Students: Colleges work to attract and support women in technology majors" The Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 52, Issue 19, Page A35. http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i19/19a03501.htm
• 2: Table 258. Bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees conferred by degree-granting institutions, by sex of student and field of study: 2004--05 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d06/tables/dt06_258.asp
• 3: ACM-W: ACM's Committee on Women in Computing, http://women.acm.org/
• 4: J. McGrath Cohoon, Toward improving female retention in the computer science major, Communications of the ACM, v.44 n.5, p.108-114, May 2001 [doi>10.1145/374308.374367]
• 5: Webkinz®, http://www.webkinz.com/
• 6: Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Foundation, http://www.daughtersandsonstowork.org/

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.2 Computer and Information Science Education
          Subjects: Computer science education

General Terms:
Human Factors