Increased contact with faculty, post-docs and grad students
why:
  • studies show that contact with faculty (ouside class) affects undergraduates' decision to persue graduate studies. (\cite{sax01}, is one such study, there are probably others as well)
  • helps show that graduate school is different from undergrad

how:

  • expand URA program (undergraduate research assistant), involve grad students to help with supervising, use URA program as a graduate recruiting tool
  • being a researcher for a term as a URA gives undergraduate students the chance to try out graduate school
  • perhaps adding an optional 4th-year research project (equivalent to one 4th year course, similar to a directed study)
  • make exisiting grad students more visible, eg. try to have females give tutorials at least as often as males in core courses

Scholarships Applications (OGS/NSERC)
why:
  • primarily targeted at getting undergrads to apply before they reach grad school
  • many of our students (females in particular) miss out on these scholarships due to lack of information and confidence to apply
how:
  • tell them exactly what they need (and more importantly, what they don't need) to get the application done
  • explain that the decision is mostly based on grades, clarify what is expected from a Research Plan (when you're an undergraduate applicant)
  • give them support, for example a faculty or PhD student mentor who will proofread their application

Recruiting students with non-CS undergraduate degrees for graduate study
why:
  • studies show that women become interested in computer science later than males
  • disciplines other than CS have larger numbers of female students
  • interdisciplinary research can benefit greatly from these students (e.g. theory can benefit from mathematicians, HCI from psychologists, bioinformatics from biologists, etc...) UBC report (speculates?) that interdisciplinary CS is more appealing to females
  • (can we make the claim, supported by a study, that these students catch up to CS undergrads and do well)
how:
  • the funding model of UW CS provides a disincentive for faculty to accept non-CS majors: they cost more
  • department provides full/partial funding for top non-cs majors while they complete remedial courses
  • actively recruit students from the following departments: [...]

Promoting the ``social good'' of CS research
why:
  • the perceived ``social good'' that a career has on society is an important factor in the career choice of females. \cite{sax01}
  • UW CS does a fair bit of research that is beneficial to society (for example: privacy enhancing technologies, delay tolerant networking in developing countries (Keshav's kiosknet project),...)
  • The image the school projects is "Research excellence", "Spinoff companies (you can own your IP..)", "Research Reputation"
how:
  • in promotional materials, give examples of research that is beneficial to society. This will require some discussion with the marketing people
  • improved outreach programs; broaden the range of high school clasess visited (not just high school CS classes), and send graduate students as well as recruiters
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Topic revision: r2 - 2007-06-01 - GregZaverucha
 
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