People & Groups Christine Ogan Ogan, Jean Robison, Susan Herring, and Manju Ahuja Awarded National Science Foundation Grant

Ogan, Jean Robison, Susan Herring, and Manju Ahuja Awarded National Science Foundation Grant

Professors Christine Ogan, Jean Robinson (Political Science), Susan Herring (SLIS) and Manju Ahuja (Information Systems) were awarded a National Science Foundation Grant of $686,000 for the study, "Toward Gender Equitable Outcomes in IT Higher Education: Beyond Computer Science." The research, which will begin in fall 2003 and last for three years, will study the process of recruiting and retaining students in information technology fields in five U.S. universities.

The project summary is as follows:

As the need for information technology (IT) professionals continues to grow, so too does the need to engage women and girls in courses of study that will qualify them for IT-related careers. The growing number of professions that do not require training in computer science, but rather in cognate IT disciplines, offer the potential to correct the pattern of gender inequity traditionally found in computer science. This project proposes to investigate tertiary education programs in information science, information systems, instructional systems technology and informatics, with computer science as a baseline comparison, in major IT degree-granting institutions across the U.S. in order to determine which are most successful at recruiting and retaining female students, and what factors favor success over time. Findings will be used to inform programmatic recommendations aimed at moving more women into the IT pipeline through a diverse range of educational programs.