This comment is a bit off topic, but one of the ways to keep underrepresented minorities and women engaged with computing at the undergraduate level is through constant encouragement. Research [0] from some computing professors suggests that:
"Without encouragement even high ability women and under-represented minorities were unlikely to persist in computing."
And this really sucks because one of the professors from this referenced research has said that CS access in High School is limited to affluent students (who are mostly white and asian) and the only place in the education pipeline where the playing field is even is in college, but without encouragement a lot of women and members of the minority community lean out.
The second issue is the fact that these fields are dominated by men and you can't control everyone's behaviour. Sure we can figure out clever ways to encourage and engage when this group is most at risk of leaning out, but once they are already in the field, I'm not sure what can be done on a larger scale?
"Without encouragement even high ability women and under-represented minorities were unlikely to persist in computing."
And this really sucks because one of the professors from this referenced research has said that CS access in High School is limited to affluent students (who are mostly white and asian) and the only place in the education pipeline where the playing field is even is in college, but without encouragement a lot of women and members of the minority community lean out.
The second issue is the fact that these fields are dominated by men and you can't control everyone's behaviour. Sure we can figure out clever ways to encourage and engage when this group is most at risk of leaning out, but once they are already in the field, I'm not sure what can be done on a larger scale?
[0] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2361276.2361304&coll=DL&dl...