Women In Computer Science Club

Details on Gladys Kenfack's talk

2006-04-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

Gladys Kenfack

Bio :

BYU CS Alumni class of 03 is currently an SDET at Microsoft in the Server Security division. Future aspirations include Marketing, Project management and enterpreneurship.

Topics of the talk :

Her perspective as a woman engineer. Life at Microsoft.
Challenges. What does it take to be hired there.

She will also bring goodies for raffle

Talk

2006-04-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

Gladys Kenfack is going to be our next guest speaker. She is a BYU alumni and is now working for Microsoft. The talk by Gladys Kenfack is going to be in HBLL 3710 on April 13 at 12:00 - 12:50. She will talk about openings at Microsoft, how to prepare for interviews at Microsoft, what are some good skill sets to have. She will also be taking resumes.

Please RSVP to neharungta [at] gmail [dot] com , and plan on coming. She is flying down specially for us. Refreshements will be served.

Movie Afternoon

2006-03-22T06:53:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

We are going to see a movie on March 25th, Saturday at 1:00 PM. It's in Room 120 TMCB. I thought it will be nice to have some different than the run of the mill Hollywood stuff. So, the movie is "Iqbal", its a Indian movie with subtitles. Its a movie about a deaf & dumb person growing up in small village without too much resources. The movie is about his journey in overcoming the hardships and achieving his dreams. Its a feel good movie which is funny yet touching. Feel free to bring some munchies. I am planning on bringing popcorn and some potato chips.

When the weather clears up and stops snowing, we are planning to have a picnic in the Kiwani's park. I am also trying hard to get a guest speaker in April.

Utah Women in Computing Day

2006-02-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

Cecily at Univerisity of Utah has a very good idea of getting the Utah women in computing together. I have put her call for participation below. Anyone interested in joining or sponsoring this event can email cecily[at]cs[dot]utah[dot]edu or
neha[at]cs[dot]byu[dot]edu

The women in the School of Computing at the University of Utah have recently gotten together a more formally organized group. We thought it would be fun to have a day when all of the women in computing in Utah (at BYU, Utah, and USU) get together to meet and talk. Hopefully, such a day will give people a chance to get to know each other and possibly lay the foundation for future research collaboration. Right now, we envision a Saturday activity at the University of Utah on March 11 between 10-2:30 with a keynote address at 10, breakouts for faculty and grads at 11, lunch at noon, splitting into groups based on research area with everybody doing 5-10 minute research talks at 1, and then whole-group wrap-up at 2. Would you and/or the other women in computing at BYU be interested in this? Could you please send me a possible headcount of interested people and/or e-mail addresses by the middle of next week, so that we can determine if there is enough interest to continue planning the day?

Thanks!
Cecily

Talk: Systems Programming in the Real World

2006-01-30T20:15:00.000-08:00

Women in Computer Science Lecture Series #2

System Programming in the Real World
by
Vandana Rungta

February 9, 2006
3710, HBLL
12:00 PM – 12:50 PM

Vandana Rungta will talk about her experiences as a system programmer. The challenges in going from writing code for student projects to working on proprietary system code, to delivering code in the open source community.

Bio: Vandana Rungta is a Senior Software Engineer at Novell Inc. She has been with Novell for the last 12 years. The focus of her work is system programming, specifically File System development and is part of the team that designed and developed NSS (A 64-bit journaled file system) for NetWare and now open sourced and ported to Suse Linux. She has a Masters degree in EE from USU, Logan, Utah and Bachelors in EE from MSU, Baroda, India.

Refreshments will be served

Club Meeting Annoucement

2006-01-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to a fun filled semester. Hope everyone is settled into their classes by now. Its time to start our fun meetings for the Women in computing club. This is a club where the women in CS get together and have some fun. Our first meeting is
on Thursday, January 26 at 12:00-1:00. It is in Room 2036 JKB. Here is the plan for our first meeting.

Decide what things we want to do this semester.
Decide if we want to have a bowling or movie night sometime this semester as a fun activity.
The pizza was huge success last time, but Moriah is gone on her mission so we don't have source for free pizza anymore. So I thought lets do a junk food potluck for our first meeting. It will be great if any of you can either bake some cookies, or bring some soda etc.Basically anything that is easy for you to lay hands on.
Also, do a small show and tell. Irene had suggested that earlier and I think it would be a lot of fun. Basically bring maybe an article related to CS stuff, that you found was exciting. Share that with everyone.
I will bring flyers for distributing to women in 142/235/236. Kristine has volunteered to go to 235 and 236. Since Natalie is the 142 TA, she had offered to announce it in the 142 classes.
I have arranged for a Guest Speaker to give a talk about the challenges of
developing open source systems. She has been working at Novell for the last 12 years. So tentatively I have planned to have her give the talk on Feb 9. This is the event we can publicize when we to the freshman classes promoting our club.

Hope to see everybody at the meeting

Upcoming Scholarship deadlines

2005-12-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Here are some really good scholarships for women in computing.

1. Society of Women Engineers. Scholarships

2. The Google Anita Borg Scholarship Info

3. AT&T Labs Fellowship program Info

4. Bell Labs Graduate Fellowship program Info

These are some prestigious scholarships for women specifically.

Thesis Proposal: Neha Rungta

2005-12-04T09:08:00.000-08:00

Neha Rungta will be proposing her thesis topic, titled "Improving Error Discovery Using a Guided Search", on Friday, December 16 at 11:00 AM in the CS Conference Room. Her advisor is Dr. Eric Mercer.

Notes from the Dec 1 Meeting

2005-12-04T08:55:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank everyone for coming to the meeting. It has been our most well attended meeting so far. Moriah is a pizza ambassador for Google, so we could get pizza for our meeting. Thanks Moriah! Also gives us one other reason to cheer for Google. We discussed how to get more undergraduates involved in the club. We decided it would be best to go to the classes like CS142, CS235, and CS236 beginning next semester and make an annoucement about the club. Natalie is a 142 TA, so she has volunteered to make the annoucement in all the sections of 142. Kristine has volunteered to do it in 235 and 236.

Laura showed us the wonderful animation movie she has been working on for the last two years. It has been done with the animation department. Students interested in Graphics can actually take classes in the animation department and get CS credit for it.

See you all next semester.

Meeting on Nov 17

2005-11-15T09:42:00.000-08:00

Our next meeting is on Thursday (Nov 17) at 12:00 PM in 2030 JKHB. This is the same room we Angela Jones' talk. The semester is fast approaching to an end. So the agenda of our meeting is going to be to come up with ideas on how to advertise the club among undergraduate women in CS. Irene had some good ideas about approaching women enrolled in CS 142. We can concretize some ideas and implement them too. We will also talk about how to set up a mentoring program within the department.

See you all on Thursday,

Excerpts from Angela Jones' Talk

2005-11-09T20:11:00.000-08:00

Angela: To be a good programmer be willing to diversify. Don't be averse to learning Microsoft products like visual studio. Become comfortable with diverse platforms. Learn different debugging tools. Be very detail oriented in your approach. Work hard. Earn your co-workers respect, if you take initiative then your co-workers will be interested in you. Be willing to think both outside and inside the box. Document well but not excessively because then it runs the risk that nobody read its. Learn to help other people. It is important to form study groups in college. If you teach others you will learn yourself too. Apply the same technique in workplace. Don't shirk from helping your colleguages. Be proactive in trying to get projects. Don't worry if its a small project. Just make sure you have "a" project to work on. Because if you have layoffs then the person with the most admin hours. Be flexible in the type of work you are willing to do. Don't think that some things are beneath you. Write down your accomplishments as you go. So during the time of annual reviews you are not wondering, "oh what did I do?"

Question by Moriah : What is the difference between academia and industry?
Answer : More praise and money in industry. But in academia there is more freedom in what you are working on.

Question by Moriah: Did you have to work more than 40 hours? Did you get paid overtime?
Answer: When you start a job is good to find out the expectations. The company Angela worked at did pay overitme.

Question by Joel: Is it common to be paid overtime?
Answer: No, its not common

Question by Krisitine: How to do well in an interview?
Answer: Make sure you have a good resume, be honest, and make sure the job's a good fit for you. Be informed about the company you are interviewing. Be calm
Barbara: Study for the interview like an exam, and make a good apperance.

Question by Kristine: Should we know different languages?
Answer: Prove to them if you don't know a language that you can pick it up

Question by Neha: What is your experience as a woman in computer science
Answer: Very good.

Be willing to talk to your professors. Talk to a professor about grad school, go to the lab meetings. There is a lot of ugrad research money at BYU. Use it.

How to develop good programming skills to be a successful computer scientist

2005-10-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

The aim of the Women in CS Lecture Series is to have women in CS/Technology come and give talks on a broad range of subjects. Our first guest is Angela Jones. The focus of the talk is on "How to develop good programming skills to be a successful computer scientist".

Angela Jones graduated with her BS in Computer Science in 1995, served a LDS mission from 1995-1997, and graduated with her MS degree in Computer Science at BYU in 1999. She then worked as a Software Engineer in Salt Lake City until 2001 when she moved to Orem. She taught at BYU from 2001-2002. She currently stays home with her 2 1/2 year old twins, which keeps her very busy.

Location 2030 JKHB, 3rd November 12:00- 1:00 PM

Microsoft funds Women in Engineering at UMass

2005-10-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has funded a Center for Women in Engineering at UMass . Microsoft will donate around $38000. Basically this money will got to build a new multipurpose room. The article states

The multipurpose room, renovated through matching funds from the College of Engineering, will be used for tutoring, meetings, and lectures, and includes five computer stations, a lounge area, and a professional development library. "The first meetings have been scheduled, and we're busy hiring tutors," Rivera said. "The students are working on the center; they're very excited about it."

How is this room going to be specifically used to help women? The are no details about that in the article. I am assuming they mean tutoring, meetings, and lectures, and includes five computer stations, a lounge area, and a professional development library for women . In my opinion at good universities there is not a lack of facilities for women. I mean they are going to have a hard time using this center for only women. I think such a center is good for technology students in general, and sure women will benefit from it too. I think the biggest thing women need right now is scholarships to help them through school in terms of monetary support.

Women in Science And Technology careers

2005-10-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

I came across this interesting article as part of the Women's History Month, "Women and Work: Then, Now, and Predicting the Future for Women in the Workplace".

According to the U.S. Department of Labor: Women in Science and Technology Careers in the 2001 Current Population Survey (CPS) data

three out of ten computer systems analysts, engineers, and scientists were women
one out of four computer programmers was a woman
one out of ten employed engineers was a woman
two of ten employed engineering technologists and technicians were women.

There is an interesting section on what employers can do to bridge the gap in the article. This a link to another intersting article Why Girls Don't Compute . It brings out some points on why girls are turned off technology early in their life.

Thesis Proposal: Kristine Perry

2005-10-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Kristine is proposing her thesis topic "Heuristics for Predicting Confidence Levels in Individual Data Point Classification", on Thursday, October 20 at 3:00 PM in the CS Conference Room.

First Meeting

2005-10-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

Hi Everybody,

The first meeting for the Women in CS club will be held on Thursday October 20 in the Wilkenson Center in Cougar Court at 12:00. We can get together and either get brown bag lunches or get something from the CougarEat. The Agenda for the meeting is going to be

* How to get more people involved in the club. According to statistics 10-15% of Computer Science Majors are women. We need to promote the club among undergraduates. I think we can get to most Grad students by word of mouth. Maybe design a flyer and put it up on the board to let everyone know that we are doing this.

* How to get local companies involved in setting up scholarships for women and/or sponsoring the club

* Ideas for Guest speakers

* What we want to do within the perview of this club

Forward this to your friends who would like to come and join the club. Hope to see you all on Thursday.

Neha

Greater Disparity in Utah

2005-10-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

An article in the Salt Lake Tribune, "Utah among highest in gender wage gap" says that the income disparity is very high in Utah. Women in Utah make 69% of what their male counterparts earn. The article claims that it is less due to discrimination and more due to issues like senority, education and culture. Which I agree totally.

This is the reason that there needs to be drive to recruit women in CS. It takes effort to break out of this cycle. This brings upon a responsibility to identify the issues women in CS face. I have heard the argument from guys why is there no drive to recruit men in the MFHD majors? Well you can't expect to find a job with a MFHD major that pays 75K as the starting salary. Also it is not the men at the recieving end of the income disparity. It is necessary to make women aware of the oppurtunities available to them and encourage them to pursue it.

Women In Sciences

2005-10-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

There was an interview in the Salt Lake Tribune with Heidi Vollmer-Snarr, a BYU chemist. She talks about her motivations, and challenges. When asked what advice she has for women seeking to enter fields like science, engineering, math and health. She says "I have spoken to some female students in the sciences at BYU who have told me that people have discouraged them from staying in their field of study."
One of the main goals of this club is to support and encourage women in the sciences.

Welcome

2005-10-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

This is a blog for the BYU's Women In Computer Science Club. All the annoucements, meeting days, agenda for the meetings, and notes from the meetings will be posted here.