Supporting, Celebrating, and Advocating for Women in Computing

Professional chapters work with student chapters and industry leaders to advocate for equity and diversity in the tech industry. We celebrate the work of our ACM-W professional chapters and are grateful for the work they do to empower women in IT.

ACM-W UK Chapter, United Kingdom
Ankara ACM-W Chapter, Turkey
Azerbaijan ACM-W Chapter, Azerbaijan
Chennai ACM-W Chapter, India
Cyprus ACM-W Chapter, Cyprus
Delhi ACM-W Chapter, India
Greek ACM-W Chapter, Greece
Hibernia ACM-W Chapter, Ireland
Jamshoro ACM-W Chapter, Pakistan
Kharkiv Information & Communication Technologies ACM-W Chapter, Ukraine
Northwest Ohio ACM-W Chapter, USA
OCWiC ACM-W Chapter, USA
Pune ACM-W Chapter, India
Tallinn ACM-W Chapter, Estonia
Trondheim ACM-W Chapter, Norway
Windhoek ACM-W Chapter, Namibia

And, we welcome our newest chapter:

Ibadan ACM-W Chapter, Nigeria

Spotlight on the Ibadan ACM-W Chapter

Interview with Dr. Oluwasefunmi Arogundade, Ibadan ACM-W Chapter Chair

When did you get your chapter charter?

We got our chapter chartered in February, 2021.

Why did you decide to form an ACM-W Professional Chapter?

We have been members of ACM professional chapter but we see the need to form ACM-W professional chapter because of the peculiarities of women in computing starting from low participation to challenges due to gender issues. We see it as an avenue to directly impact women in Tech and connect more women to ACM activities and benefit; and interestingly inspire African girl child to choose Computer Science as career through educational workshops and mentor-ship.

What strengths does your chapter have?

The strength of our chapter is the coverage of our members all over the country. We have members in all of the geopolitical zones of Nigeria. This makes it easier for us to hold programmes in different zones at the same time because each will be anchored by our members in that zone. Our chapter is blessed with hardworking, dedicated, determined team who are ready to increase the visibility of ACM -W agenda to every corners of the nation.

Where do you see your chapter in five years from now?

In the next five years we hope to see our chapter covering 90% of Higher Education institutions in Nigeria in terms of membership.

Do you have photos of your team?

We have photos of our Chair, Vice-Chair and Treasurer and the fliers for the first few programmes. We don’t have a group picture yet because we started our chapter when Covid was ravaging.

What projects have you completed?

Since we chartered in February we have been up and doing to keep the ball rolling for our chapter. We have completed a career symposium for secondary school students in celebration of Girls in ICT day which attracted more than 100 participants, mainly from high school. We also held a six week summer school on Digital Marketing for our students that are on holidays.

What projects are you currently working on?

We are planning to have a web based and mobile responsive platform to serve as a career clinic for high school and university undergraduate students. The platform will serve as a communication and interactive platform for the concerned categories of students to answer questions that concern their career in computing and related fields. This is to serve as a follow-up on the symposium we already completed. We are planning to have our website and social media handles up and running.

What connections do you have with university students? What activities do you do?

We do collaborate with the ACM student chapter to hold programmes like the one we had in June tagged Career Pathfinder in Computing where we invited seasoned young researchers in academia and industry to reveal what it takes to have a successful career in academia and industry. We also collaborated with the ACM-W student chapter to have tech talks on deep learning. The following fliers testify to this.

What connections do you have with K-12 students? What activities do you do?

We had connections with state ministries of education, science and technology in some of the states. The goal is to get the stakeholders involved in the programme. One of the educators from the government agency joined us in the symposium. We celebrated GIRLS in ICT day on April 22^nd, 2021. We organized symposiums in four geopolitical zones of Nigeria. The title of the symposium was Career Prospects in Computing. We planned to join this celebration every year by organizing a unique programme for K-12 students.

If there is a local ACM-W Celebration near you, what involvement do you have?

Presently we are not aware of any ACM-W celebration but if we have anyone we will graciously give our support as may be required with the consideration of necessary virtues for successful collaboration.

What benefits do the members of your chapter gain from your connections?

The following are the professional, social and support our members stand to gain from the connections:

Exposure / acquiring new ideas and knowledge in the field of computing by organizing lecture series, seminars, webinars and workshops for all members
Organizing national and international conferences for both members and non-members to attend
Organizing inter-tertiary institutions talent hunt and quiz competition for membership institutions to participate and prizes and awards are giving to the best institutions
Providing sponsoring or soft loans for members to attend international conferences, to publish journals and to make progress in their academic pursuits.
Providing mentorship to all the mentees
Organizing career/ social get-together for both our members and non-members in order to know each other better
Providing enable environment for collaborations for all members
Providing assistance ranging from financial, emotional to physical to all members who are in need.

ACM-W Professional Chapters give you a local voice for change with the backing of an international organization. Professional chapters work with student chapters and industry leaders to advocate for equity and diversity in the tech industry. Our chapters around the world organize conferences, hack-a-thons, fundraisers, lecture series, community service, and networking events that gather together local students and IT professionals. Start one today!

Contact Rachelle Kristof Hippler (rhippler@bw.edu) for more information.

https://www.acm.org/chapters/professionals/how-to-start-a-professional-acm-w-chapter