News from ACM-W Celebrations
Remarks from Celebration Committee Chair
It was great to see many of our Celebration coordinators in attendance at the SIGCSE 2015 Technical Symposium in Kansas City at the beginning of March. During a town hall meeting organized by Gloria Townsend, many of the coordinators offered advice and support about organizing celebrations events. The enthusiasm for the project and the interest of others in exploring celebration events in new regions was evident in the discussion.
<p”>This spring will see many events being held in several locations in the US as well as in Cuba and Abu Dhabi (both first-time celebrations!). It will be exciting to hear about each of them in the coming months.
As always, if there are any issues of concern or ways in which I or my committee can be helpful, please don’t hesitate to reach out (jltims@bw.edu).
~ Jodi Tims
The Ohio Celebration of Women in Computing – a Post-Celebration Report
by Bettina Bair, The Ohio State University, OCWiC Publicity Chair
OCWiC was held at the spacious Lodge at Sawmill Creek Resort in Huron, Ohio on February 20-21, 2015. The nearly 200 attendees ranged from freshmen to graduate students, from faculty to women working in IT jobs in industry. There were 29 colleges and universities from Ohio represented. The event was highly successful, as was evident in some of the comments of attendees.
“Seeing other women achieve so much helps me to positively see my future in the field, and what I can potentially do to impact it.”
“I was thrilled to have the opportunity to share what I’ve been working so hard on. I was also very encouraged that the audience had excellent questions.”
Career panels focused on either industry or academic careers. In the industry career panel, the audience was able to hear from professionals from companies like Microsoft, Marathon, OE Connection, GE and Cardinal Health. Academic career panelists from Wright State University, Allegheny College, Case Western Reserve University and University of Dayton spoke about their decision to pursue research and how they balance the demands of career with personal life.
Undergraduate students had the opportunity to showcase their research with a poster session that kicked off the conference on Saturday morning. The professionally executed posters showed everything from the benefits of hackathons to a methodology for finding transcription factor binding sites. Two students, Christine Antonsen of Oberlin College and Kiera Dobbs, College of Wooster, were awarded $1000 to attend the international Grace Hopper Celebration in Houston, TX later this year. Honorable Mentions were awarded to Samantha Mater, Krista Lafentres, Stephen Checkoway, Cynthia Taylor of Oberlin College and Alexandra Coman, Victoria Kerr, Thomas Bowersock, Yuki Matoba, Andrew Warren, of Ohio Northern University.
paper presentations were made by faculty and graduate students alike. The diversity of the topics illustrated the breadth and scope of opportunities in computing. There were presentations on cracking binary analysis, performance versus quality of responses in online systems and internships.
the two day conference, the women had many opportunities for informal socializing and networking. Besides the informal meal arrangements with seating at large tables, there were interactive workshops and a dance party that ran late into the evening.
The highlight of the conference was the keynote speech by Dr. Lynn Andrea Stein, a founding faculty member at Olin College of Engineering, Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science, and Associate Dean and Director of the Collaboratory. Stein’s research spans the fields of artificial intelligence, programming languages, and human-computer interaction. Dr. Stein’s inspiring talk wove together themes of artificial and human intelligence to explore the biological and cultural foundations of diversity and bias.
Most attendees left the conference with new professional and academic goals, and strategies for achieving them. For example,
“I plan on taking a slightly different approach to acquiring a job, and internship.”
“[I plan to] take into consideration the pursuit of a higher education past what I am currently pursuing.”
“I found out that some grad schools that people were attending had a more universal approach to artificial intelligence and robotics than others, so I will look for a grad school that takes this approach.”
The OCWiC conference represented a rare opportunity for women in computing to interact and share experiences in a collegial and collaborative environment.
More info: www.ocwic.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ocwic.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OCWiC