A scrawny figure wearing Coke bottle glasses and a pocket protector, hunched over a desktop with his eyes forever glued to a glaring screen.
This is the stereotypical image that Jessica Boles, senior in electrical engineering, wants to eradicate. Boles instead wants to focus on recruiting and retaining women in both the electrical engineering and computer science fields.
With 26 percent of women holding professional computing positions in 2013, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, Boles said her vision is nothing if not timely.
As the vice president of Systers, a tutoring and training program housed in the College of Engineering, Boles and her fellow Systers stress the need to recruit and maintain strong female mentors to encourage greater gender diversity within the department.
By pairing a new undergraduate with an older student or professor, Boles said the introductory classes are less deterring for potential majors and bolster the chances for more females present in the department.
“We are big believers that if most women if they haven’t seen other women in (the field) or they haven’t grown up around it, they won’t even consider engineering because it’s weird,” Boles said. “It’s not the norm.”
But Systers was created with the idea that norms that are meant to be broken.
Businesswomen like Sheryl Sandberg, chief executive officer of Facebook and author of Lean In, serve as primary examples in redefining roles for women in the workforce, not limited to computer science and engineering.
As part of an extended curriculum, Systers took part in Sandberg’s Lean In Circle, a program launched from the book, that discusses how to develop future generations of more confident female professionals.
“It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I took as face value as far as how women have to survive in our field,” Boles said of the impact Sandberg’s book on her beliefs. “In reality, it taught me that change is possible. If everyone just accepts that status quo, then nothing ever progresses. That’s what that class really taught me: to stand up and use my voice and stand up for what I believe in.”
Though Boles cited that female undergraduates in the department have increased from six to eight percent in the last year, she said asserting a stronger female presence in a classroom can still be awkward.
This is a reality that Anagha Uppal, a sophomore in college scholars and specializing in computer science and statistics, knows all too well.
“When (women) do ask for help, I get this feeling that men, when they’re explaining things, they’ll explain things in a lot more detailed fashion and breaking things down into simpler and simpler bits, as if girl couldn’t understand it on the same level as a guy could,” Uppal said.
Currently, Systers visits schools like L& N STEM Academy to teach classes on basic coding as part of their outreach in Knoxville.
This aspect, Boles said, remains a key part of the organization’s mission as well as the most satisfying part of her work with Systers.
“(Students) see what’s were doing, they’re looking up to us, they see that we’re women, and you can just tell that they’re seeing this as the norm,” Boles said. “That’s what we want them to think — that’s it is not abnormal for them to consider it.”
WomEngineer’s Day, an inaugural, no-cost conference for those interested in engaging with computer science and electrical engineering professionals will be held on April 11.
The event will be organized by Systers and sponsored by the College of Engineering’s board of advisors.
To register for the event, please visit WomEngineersDay.com or contact Jessica Boles at [email protected].
