Are We There in Mentoring for Diversity?
Are we willing to face our fears? Besides a session at #ghc12 packed with inspiration and food for thought, I felt the under-current was about us all facing our fears. Dr. Manuel Pérez-Quiñones (Virginia Tech) started the panel by addressing reverse discrimination. This is really the fear of the majority, that programs and awards targeting the underrepresented somehow takes away from the represented. This fear is revealed in statements like, “you have it so easy because you are a women” or “when are we going to offer a whites only …”. He also pointed out that different groups come with different cultural backgrounds and therefore different needs. Of course, most of the existing programs address the needs of the majority.
Dr. Mary Lou Soffa (University of Virginia) spoke about how things are going in the computing pipeline. There has been shrinkage from middle school up through PhD. However, there are successful programs and strategies to help reverse this trend. She is involved with Tapestry, which targets middle & high school teachers by demonstrating effective practices for teaching CS, introducing recruiting strategies, provide materials to use in CS courses. They also offer 3 levels of intro CS at UVa (expert, some experience & novice) and the novice course which has more women and minorities than the others is also actually converting more women & minorities to pursue CS degrees.
Dr. Maria Klawe (Harvey Mudd College) spoke about the imposter syndrome, which is all about the fears we carry around with us. They may change over time, but we are never immune to feeling inadequate, unworthy or scared. She suggests 3 steps for dealing with the imposter syndrome. 1) Admit it and you will stop feeling like an idiot, don’t let it stop you from doing something you are uncomfortable. 2) Practice doing things you are uncomfortable with, it gets easier. 3) Build a mentoring network, one of the best ways to feel better about yourself is by helping other people, include all levels of relationships in network.
Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III (University of Maryland) spoke about the culture of STEM courses and how they are much more prone to pit students against each other (eg. grading on a curve) than encouraging collaboration. Only 20% of women & minorities who start a STEM degree finish it. But the stats are not that much better for others: 32% for whites & 42% for asians. He says that “culture has everything to do with the questions we ask and the questions we don’t ask.”
The other big ideas from the session (and for facing our fears):
- When you target a group, don’t exclude others. When you include the majority, then they can become your advocates and mentors.
- Building community among people is very important, we need many more efforts where people can trust each other.
- Mentoring has been proven effective in expanding the pipeline and institutions of higher learning need to set clear expectations for their departments about mentoring.
- If there aren’t things happening in computing in K12, then there won’t be things happening later.
- In science you will get more rejections than acceptances. It isn’t personal, it’s all about the questioning behind science. Play games & learn to lose. Have a mentor provide a reality check.
- Realize the stereotypes we’ve got in computing now probably came about when PCs found their way into the home and schools. The first games were shooting games because they were the easiest to create with the limited resources of the early PCs. That grabbed early male interest and they grabbed the computers. It is time to grab them back (and share;-)