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5 Colleges and Universities Awarded NCWIT Academic Alliance Seed Fund

Faculty and staff at five colleges and universities have received top awards in the National Center for Women & Information Technology's Academic Alliance Seed Fund — a program that financially supports efforts to recruit and retain women in technology disciplines.

For 2014, the NCWIT Academic Alliance Seed Fund, which is provided in partnership with Microsoft Research, awarded $10,000 each to five individual institutions, including:

College of St. Scholastica
Lead: Jennifer Rosato
Project Title: Promoting Female and Diverse Student Retention through Faculty Use of a Growth Mindset Approach
Project: Professional development for faculty members, focusing on instilling a "growth mindset" on students in CS and pre-engineering courses.

Georgia Gwinnett College
Leads: Sonal Dekhane, Kristine Nagel, Nannette Napier
Project Title: Georgia Gwinnett College Women in IT Boot Camp
Project: A week-long workshop for 24 sophomores aimed at giving them a head start in programming.

South Carolina Technical College System
Leads: Stephanie Frazier, Salandra Bowman
Project Title: SCTCS Triple A Academy
Project: A week-long pilot program for 10 to 14 women enrolled in IT programs.

Tufts University
Lead: Benjamin Shapiro
Project Title: Engaging Women in Computing Through Musical Instrument and Performance
Project: Curriculum and hardware and software resources for developing computational thinking through "the design and construction of tangible programmable electronic musical instruments that youth can use for live performance."

University of Arizona
Leads: Gondy Leroy, Paulo Goes
Project Title: Tomorrow's Leaders Equipped for Diversity
Project: Professional development program to build awareness of diversity issues for students in CS and IT.

"We know to solve the world's most difficult challenges we need diverse teams," said Rane Johnson-Stempson, principal research director at Microsoft Research, in a prepared statement. "This is why Microsoft is pleased to support the NCWIT Seed Fund to encourage more effective ways of recruitment and retention of women at college-level computing and technology programs."

Additional details about the program can be found on NCWIT's site.

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


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