What can be done throughout the curriculum?

In all courses:

• Establish an environment where it is easy to ask questions.

• Give students a glimpse of how their knowledge would be used in industry. Industry advisors tell U.S. academic Computer Science departments that the main skill that the students miss learning during their studies is the ability to interact well on team projects. Consider including some assignments in which students, while acting relatively independently, can contribute to a larger project and see results that they could not have achieved by themselves.

• Use inclusive examples and language. For example, don't use artificial intelligence examples in which the men are active players and the women passive props. Use ``he or she" when talking about the end-user, to emphasize that software should be designed for both males and females. Don't choose all of your examples from a narrow subject area (e.g., warfare). Aim for broader appeal.

• Don't water down the content of the course but make sure that your examples emphasize the wide usefulness of the principles. For example, a robot is fun to play with, but it will be even more appealing if students understand the relevance of robot research in advancing remote surgery, handling of hazardous wastes, space exploration, etc.

• Rewrite some abstract course assignments to develop the same skills and tools while including a specific interesting application. For example, assignments in numerical courses can be use data drawn from applications in medicine, transportation engineering, scheduling, etc.

• Grade assignments and written exams without looking at the students' names, so that the grader does not know the gender of the student.

Recruit more female students:

• Invite female students to visit your department a year or two before they need to decide where to attend university. Organize a day of demonstrations and tutorials.

• Make use of printed resources and web documents to encourage such students to choose computer science.

• Offer summer short courses to help talented female pre-college students bridge deficiencies in their background and develop confidence in their abilities in computer science and mathematics.

Efforts such as these require dedicated effort for some faculty members and graduate assistants. This should be recognized by a reduction of other duties and funding provisions (either within the institution or from outside sources) so that these programs are not run as an overload.

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``When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
J. W. Gardner

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``The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."
A. France

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``A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

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