Zicklin School Wins $500,000 Grant to Address Gender Imbalance in Computing

Two years ago, the Center for Inclusive Computing (CIC) at Northeastern University in Boston awarded a grant to the Zicklin School of Business to undertake a deep analysis of the gender distribution of its undergraduate computing information systems (CIS) classes. Faculty in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics are seeking to achieve gender parity among students declaring CIS majors.  

But after studying enrollment and retention data gathered across eight semesters (from fall 2019 to spring 2023), investigators saw that only about one in three CIS majors were women. This was an improvement over 2016, when the proportion was just one in four, but it wasn’t where they wanted to be.   

Left to right: Henry, Jain, Hazarika

“The Zicklin School is doing a better job than many other schools,” said Radhika Jain, PhD, associate professor of information systems, noting that only 23 percent of computing majors are women according to national averages. “But as a public university committed to enhancing our students’ socioeconomic mobility, we need to move the needle closer to 50 percent.” 

Dr. Jain and her colleagues Sonali Hazarika, PhD, executive director of Zicklin undergraduate programs, and lecturer Tracy Henry, PhD, of the Bert W. Wasserman Department of Economics and Finance, were the principal investigators on the CIC-funded analysis project launched two years ago. Now, having crunched the numbers, the team approached the Center for Inclusive Computing, with concrete ideas for making CIS degrees more accessible.   

“The CIC was interested in working with us again because of the large number of students we educate and also our unique position as a large university in which computing is mostly taught in the business school and not as part of math or engineering,” says Dr. Henry. 

The Center for Inclusive Computing was launched in 2019 as part of a broader effort to improve the lives of women and girls around the world. “The reason we care so much about equity in computing departments is that so much wealth creation is happening in technology,” offers Catherine Gill, the CIC’s Executive Director. “However, more than other disciplines, computing can feel like it’s already ruled out for people when they show up in college. No one tells you that you can’t study biology in college because you didn’t take AP [Advanced Placement] Biology in high school but in computing it can feel like it’s already too late.”  

Barriers to entering the computing profession as a college student translate to barriers to “some of the best-remunerated careers out there,” Gill adds. “And that exclusion usually translates to women, people from races and ethnicities historically marginalized in tech, and students from less privileged backgrounds.”  

Three C’s: Context, Consistency, Combining   
Five years ago, as part of its efforts to encourage more women and underrepresented groups to enroll in CIS classes, the Chook department introduced a new course, CIS 2300, Programming and Computational Thinking. (The full story of the CIS 2300 launch is detailed in a 2022 Zicklin News article.)  

One hallmark of the new course design was promoting the practice of computing in context: teaching computational thinking not in the abstract, but in the context of solving everyday problems, no matter which domain. The CIS 2300 redesign introduced hands-on assignments and exercises in which students apply classroom concepts to real-world data analytics problems—for example, using Python to analyze NYC Open Data’s public datasets for trends and patterns in 311 calls or motor vehicle collisions, for example. “We hope to add more domain-specific projects and examples within the course, to show students how computational thinking can be applied in their respective fields of study,” Jain says. 

This hands-on approach is being applied to all quantitative courses in the Zicklin School. Instead of requiring higher-level mathematics as a prerequisite for a given class, explains Dr. Hazarika, “We now incorporate quantitative skills while we’re teaching the subject, so that students see the reason and value of doing it.” If higher-level math is incorporated in context rather than up front, the thinking goes, it’s more likely to stick with students.  

“By not letting math be a stumbling block, we’re being more encouraging and inclusive of everyone,” adds Dr. Henry, who uses this method in her economics courses.  

In addition to adding context, the Zicklin School is also promoting consistency by streamlining and synchronizing multi-section CIS courses. The purpose is to ensure that students have broadly similar experiences and feel equally prepared for higher-level CIS courses, no matter who the instructor is.  

The third part of democratizing computing is combining computing with other disciplines. A new major, accounting analytics, which blends accountancy and CIS coursework, is currently under review by the New York State Department of Education. The Chook and Wasserman departments, meanwhile, are discussing the creation of a similar program combining data science with economics. “Zicklin’s three Cs are right in line with national best practices identified by the CIC and the dozens of schools we work with across the United States,” Gill adds. 

“People need programming skills not just in CIS but increasingly in other majors,” Jain offers. “They need enough of a technical background to be able to quickly analyze data in whatever field they’re working in.” And that’s not just within the business school, adds Hazarika: “Analytics can be used in every field, even journalism and public affairs.”  

Which means, ultimately, that the work has only just begun. “Our department hopes to involve other faculty in infusing these pedagogical practices into other courses, as I believe these interventions will positively impact how to effectively engage students with a heterogeneous background in programming,” says Nanda Kumar, chair of the Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics.  

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