Computer Science at Wellesley Early Memories Eric Roberts
Computer Science at Wellesley Early Memories Eric Roberts Wellesley College March 1, 2015
My Life Prior to Wellesley • In the 1970 s, I lived in a bifurcated world: 01001000 01100001 01110010 011101100001 01110010 01100100 Academically, I was deeply involved in computer science. Politically, I was deeply committed to feminism. • It became painfully clear that the opportunities open to the men I knew in my academic work were far greater than those open to the women with whom I shared my political energies. • I decided to try to remedy the situation by setting up a computer science program at a women’s college and ended up coming to Wellesley in 1980.
Women Attack Male-Dominated CS Apple Computer, January 1984
Memories of the Old Days • In the first years after Wellesley established the CS department, the number of students majoring in computer science doubled every year. • It was an incredible challenge to hire new faculty. In 1984 -85, the ACM professional society estimated that there was one applicant for every seven advertised faculty positions in the United States. • Everyone knew that they needed to know something about this incredibly powerful technology, but expertise was in desperately short supply. Those of us with backgrounds in computer science became essential resources for the entire campus. • At that time, most universities had home-grown hacker community that provided the necessary expertise. Culturally, Wellesley had never developed a similar community because such behavior was disparaged as “obsessive. ” • To encourage the development of a hacker community for Wellesley, I decided to hold a contest. . .
My Earlier Life among the Wizards The history of the Internet has been told in several books. One tells the following interesting story: A small circle of friends at BBN had gotten hooked on Dungeons and Dragons, an elaborate fantasy role-playing game in which one player invents a setting and populates it with monsters and puzzles, and the other players then make their way through that setting. The game exists only in the minds of the players. Dave Walden got his introduction to the game one night when Eric Roberts, a student from a class he was teaching at Harvard, took him to a D&D session. Walden immediately rounded up a group of friends from the ARPANET team for continued sessions. Roberts created the Mirkwood Tales. . One of the regulars was Will Crowther. . .
The BBN ARPANET Team Dave Walden Willie Crowther
Willie Crowther’s Adventure Game Adventure Welcome to ADVENTURE!! Would you like instructions? YES Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in treasure and gold, though it is rumored that some who enter are never seen again. Magic is said to work in the cave. I will be your eyes and hands. Direct me with natural English commands; I don't understand all of the English language, but I do a pretty good job. (Should you get stuck, type "HELP" or "? " for some general hints. ) Good Luck! ---You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully to the south. The road runs up a small hill to the west. GO INSIDE You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring. There are some keys on the ground here. .
In the. Crowther’s Age of the. Adventure Slow Machine Willie Game Adventure You are intothe Hall of the Mountain withinstructions? passages off in most directions, some of which Welcome ADVENTURE!! Would. King, you like appear to be newly constructed. YES A huge green fierce snake bars the way! Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in RELEASE BIRD treasure and gold, though it is rumored that some who enter are never The bird. Magic attacksis the snake, and in an. I will astounding seenlittle again. saidgreen to work in the cave. be your flurry eyes drives the snake away. and hands. Direct me with natural English commands; I don't understand all of the English language, but I do a pretty good job. (Should. . . some you time get laterstuck, . . . type "HELP" or "? " for some general hints. ) Good Luck! ---You are standing atcanyon the endwhich of a road smalland brick building. in a secret exitsbefore to the anorth east. A huge green dragon barsstream the way! Around you is fierce a forest. A small flows out of the building and The dragon out. The on aroad persian down a gullyistosprawled the south. runsrug!! up a small hill to the west. GO INSIDEBIRD RELEASE You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring. The little bird attacks the green dragon, and in an astounding flurry There are some keys on theashes ground here. . gets burnt to a cinder. The blow away.
Kristin Powers’ Extension Adventure You are in a large room, with a passage to the south, a passage to the west, and a wall of broken rock to the east. There is a large "Y 2" on a rock in the room's center. There is a crystal box here, firmly set into the rock. The box contains a sparkling ruby diadem. You're at the bottom of the dry well. A well-used path leads north. There is also a path leading into a canyon on the west. There is an octagonal brass bar here. You are in what appears to be a laboratory, with an exit to the northeast. The floor is covered with papers, and the entire area is littered with scraps and tools. There a few blueprints lying around haphazardly, but the whole place is such a mess that I doubt you could find anything specific in here. At the south end of the room you can see a strange contraption made from brass, ebony, ivory and glass.
The Bermuda Project • Bermuda is a small island lying 600 miles east of North Carolina. • Its land area is approximately 20 square miles (less than twice the size of the Stanford campus). • Its population is 62, 000 (roughly the size of Palo Alto) with two public high schools: Berkeley and Cedarbridge. • In 1998, Stanford was asked to design a new computer science curriculum for Bermuda’s public secondary schools. • The Bermuda curriculum has been extremely successful. Five years after graduation, more than 40% of students who had taken at least two CS courses were working in an IT-related job.
Image of Computing (California) In 1998, sixth-graders in selected California schools were asked to draw their image of a computer professional. The drawings are for the most part aligned with traditional stereotypes:
Images of Computing (Bermuda) In Bermuda, we repeated this experiment after students had taken our courses and got rather different results:
What a Woman in CS Looks Like With 244 women currently declared, CS is the most popular undergraduate major for women at Stanford.
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