NSF RESET: A Conference to Support Returning Women’s Transition to Computing and Technology Discipline

Farzana Rahman; Elodie V. Billionniere; Sinchana Sulugodu Shashidhara

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Conference: 2022 ASEE St. Lawrence Section Annual Conference
Location: Syracuse University, New York
Publication Date: March 25, 2022
Start Date: March 25, 2022
End Date: February 26, 2024
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--45417
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/45417
Download Count: 48

Paper Authors

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Farzana Rahman Syracuse University

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Dr Farzana Rahman is an Associate Teaching Professor at the EECS department of Syracuse University. Her research spans the domains of mobile healthcare, healthcare data analytics, and pervasive health technologies. Broadly, my research focuses on integrating mobile and pervasive technologies in health and wellness environments to improve users’ quality of life, mental and physical wellbeing. My research also expands in the direction of mobile security, information and communication technology for development (ICT4D), broadening participation in CS/ IT discipline through the exploration of 1) discipline-based education research to inform pedagogical practices that garner interest and retain women and minorities; 2) success factors contributing to the persistence and success of students (both traditional and non-traditional) in introductory programming courses; 3) how different pedagogical practices can increase underrepresented student performance in CS/IT courses; 4) factors of success impacting student performance in online and inverted classrooms within computing majors and 5) how effective re-entry pathways can facilitate transition of returning women in computing based discipline.

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Elodie V. Billionniere Miami Dade College orcid.org/0000-0001-5363-4048

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Dr. Elodie Billionniere is a Senior Associate Professor in the School of Engineering and Technology at Miami Dade College (MDC). She has helped MDC secure over $3 million in federal funding the past three years for STEM and emerging technology education programs as well as a collaborative high tech learning hub, Cloud Computing Center, with the aim of providing further opportunities to minoritized populations to meet workforce needs. With industry partners, she has been instrumental in the creation of new educational pathways in Enterprise Cloud Computing, which are unique in the state of Florida. She is the Lead Faculty for these programs. She holds several industry certifications, including PMP, ScrumMaster, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, and AWS Certified Big Data. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Arizona State University.

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Sinchana Sulugodu Shashidhara Syracuse University

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Abstract

One of the critical needs of the 21st-century workforce development is the recruitment, retention, and graduation of women with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills. Research suggests that women drop out of academic programs and leave the workforce to care for their families, financial setbacks, personal obligations and call to active-duty program. Returning women, very rarely choose to pursue STEM education or cannot enter the STEM workforce because - 1) these fields are constantly evolving; 2) the technical preparations can be challenging or unknown; 3) technical skills development require a lot of time and effort; 4) there are not enough transitional programs which can leverage the existing background of returning women to develop new knowledge; and 5) industry and academia do not have enough knowledge to create diverse reentry pathways to prepare returning women for the 21st century workforce environment. Some niches within the STEM field, like Emerging Technology (EmTech) concentrations (e.g., cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing), are expected to grow job opportunities more quickly than others. The demands of these jobs can only be fulfilled by creating opportunities for one of the largest untapped talent pools, which is returning women. Therefore, to understand the barriers and challenges faced by returning women to enter computing and tech education and workforce, a three-day virtual conference, RESET (Re-enter STEM through Emerging Technology), was organized in March 2021. Through our experience in organizing a large-scale national conference, we surveyed 444 attendees (conference organizers and participants) to investigate their level of satisfaction and the overall effectiveness in helping returning women facilitating their transition to computing and technology discipline. In this paper, we present the qualitative and quantitative results on conference attendee’s satisfaction level and its effectiveness in identifying appropriate resources to (re-)enter EmTech educational and professional pipeline.

Citation
Format

Rahman, F., & Billionniere, E. V., & Sulugodu Shashidhara, S. (2022, March), NSF RESET: A Conference to Support Returning Women’s Transition to Computing and Technology Discipline Paper presented at 2022 ASEE St. Lawrence Section Annual Conference, Syracuse University, New York. 10.18260/1-2--45417

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - One of the critical needs of the 21st-century workforce development is the recruitment, retention, and graduation of women with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills. Research suggests that women drop out of academic programs and leave the workforce to care for their families, financial setbacks, personal obligations and call to active-duty program.  Returning women, very rarely choose to pursue STEM education or cannot enter the STEM workforce because - 1) these fields are constantly evolving; 2) the technical preparations can be challenging or unknown; 3) technical skills development require a lot of time and effort; 4) there are not enough transitional programs which can leverage the existing background of returning women to develop new knowledge; and 5) industry and academia do not have enough knowledge to create diverse reentry pathways to prepare returning women for the 21st century workforce environment. Some niches within the STEM field, like Emerging Technology (EmTech) concentrations (e.g., cybersecurity, data science, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing), are expected to grow job opportunities more quickly than others. The demands of these jobs can only be fulfilled by creating opportunities for one of the largest untapped talent pools, which is returning women. 
Therefore, to understand the barriers and challenges faced by returning women to enter computing and tech education and workforce, a three-day virtual conference, RESET (Re-enter STEM through Emerging Technology), was organized in March 2021. Through our experience in organizing a large-scale national conference, we surveyed 444 attendees (conference organizers and participants) to investigate their level of satisfaction and the overall effectiveness in helping returning women facilitating their transition to computing and technology discipline. In this paper, we present the qualitative and quantitative results on conference attendee’s satisfaction level and its effectiveness in identifying appropriate resources to (re-)enter EmTech educational and professional pipeline. 
AU  - Farzana Rahman
AU  - Elodie V. Billionniere
AU  - Sinchana Sulugodu Shashidhara
CY  - Syracuse University, New York
DA  - 2022/03/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - NSF RESET: A Conference to Support Returning Women’s Transition to Computing and Technology Discipline
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/45417
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--45417
ER  -