怎样让姑娘们爱上计算机学科

    如何提高年轻女性对科学、技术、工程学和数学领域的兴趣？这个话题在今年的商界女强人峰会上再次被人们提起。针对这个问题，哈维玛德学院校长（Harvey Mudd College）玛利亚•克拉维提出了最具可行性的实施方案。

    2005年克拉维在学院上任时，计算机科学专业的毕业生中只有10%是女性。到去年，这个比例达到了40%，几乎是全国平均水平的4倍。

    克拉维和教员们是如何做到这一点的？他们首先观察了女性不愿涉足这一领域的原因。克拉维说：“第一，她们觉得自己不会喜欢这一领域；第二，她们觉得自己不会擅长这一领域；第三，她们觉得诸如计算机科学这类专业的学生都是怪胎，不懂生活，没有情调。她们可不想被人看成那样。”

    教员们修改了入门课程，将以前的“直接编程”改为一门叫做“在科学和工程学中使用计算方法解决问题”的课程，试图借此扭转人们的成见。“老观念认为学习编程是为了学会编程，而我们的新理念告诉大家学习编程是为了解决有趣的问题，这个转变让学科的形象焕然一新，”她说。“因为我们知道，女性会对‘你可以用计算机做什么’这类问题感兴趣。”

    克拉维说，计算机科学系的入门课程非常有趣，于是女学生们接着选了第二门课。到了学习第三门课的时候，她们已经有机会去做一份很不错的暑期工作了。那时她们也了解到：学习计算机科学听起来并没有那么极端。只要愿意，等到了大四的时候，她们每个人都可以获得五个工作机会。

    学院还给所有大一新生出资，让她们参加格雷斯•霍普庆典，以庆祝女性在计算机领域的成就。今年，哈维玛德学院从750名学生中挑选出58名参加了周三在巴尔的摩举行的庆典。

    克拉维向观众们强调，最大的困难在于改变人们对计算机科学的成见。她希望父母在女儿们进入大学之前，不要强迫她们选择这一领域，因为“整个文化都让年轻女性认为这不是她该学的，她不擅长这个。”

    从媒体的角度，她举了情景喜剧《老友记》（Friends）中钱德勒作为例证。钱德勒的工作是数据处理，但是一直以来都没有人知道。她说：“如果我能挥动魔杖让梦想成真，我要让电视剧向人们展示那些迷人的年轻女性，而她们实际上都是计算机科学家。”

    对那些希望让女性进入这个行业的观众，她的首要建议是让他们鼓励年轻女性在大一选修一门计算机科学的课程，还有就是让他们向计算机科学系捐款，鼓舞教员们把教学大纲设计得更加有趣，更加平易近人。“至于电视剧，”她说，“我真的很希望有这么一部连续剧。”

    译者：严匡正

    One of the recurring topics at this year's Most Powerful Women Summit revolved around how to get more young women interested in science, technology, engineering, and math. The most promising case study on how to do it came from Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College.

    When Klawe started at Harvey Mudd in 2005, 10% of graduates with computer science degrees were women. Last year that figure jumped to about 40%, a rate nearly four times the national average.

    How did she and her faculty do it? They first looked at why women don't enter the field to begin with: "No. 1, they think they won't like it, No. 2 they think they won't be good at it, and No. 3 they think the people who major in computer science are geeks who have no life, and they don't want to be seen as that," Klawe said.

    The faculty attempted to alter those perceptions by changing the introductory course from straight programming to a class called computational approaches to solving problems in science and engineering. "This whole idea that instead of learning to program to learn to program, learn to program in order to solve fun problems -- it frames it totally differently," she said, "because we know women are interested in computers for what you can do with them."

    Klawe says that the computer science department makes the first course so much fun that female students take the second course, and by the time they're taking the third course, they have a great summer job lined up and the idea of being a computer science major doesn't sound that radical. If they want it, these women could have five job offers by the time they're starting their senior year, Klawe said.

    The college also offers to pay for all incoming female first-year students to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Harvey Mudd is bringing 58 of its 750 students to this year's conference, which started on Wednesday in Baltimore.

    Klawe stressed to the audience that a big hurdle is changing the way computer science is perceived. She discouraged parents from getting their daughters into the field before college because," the whole culture is swaying young women to say this is not for me, I won't be good at it."

    From a media perspective, she brought up the example of Chandler on the sitcom Friends. Chandler was in data processing but no one ever knew it, she noted. "If I could wave my magic wand and have one thing happen," she said, "I'd have a TV series that shows attractive young women who have lives who are actually working as computer scientists."

    Her top tips for the audience to get women into the industry were to encourage young women to take one computer science class their first year of college, and to donate money to computer science departments to encourage them to make their program less intimidating and more fun. "And that TV series," she said. "I really want it."