Girls in IT: How to develop talent and leverage support

The objectives of this panel are to inform the audience about national and regional initiatives developed by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) to reach out to middle and high school girls; learn from promising experiences in which the panelists have been directly involved; and discuss venues to scale and sustain efforts to increase women\u27s participation in technology careers. Panelists will describe their particular experiences, and discuss ways to utilize the Aspirations in Computing program to increase enrollment and retention of females in computing. A minimum of 30 minutes will be set aside for question and answer

NCWIT Scorecard: A Report on the Status of Women in Information Technology

The NCWIT Scorecard shows trends in girls' and women's participation in computing in the U.S. over time, providing a benchmark for measuring progress and identifying areas for improvement

The ACT Report: Action to Catalyze Tech, A Paradigm Shift for DEI

Despite widespread awareness of the lack of DEI in tech and public commitments from tech companies to do better, great uncertainty exists among leaders about how to make real progress.While there are deep pockets of DEI excellence within tech companies themselves, there has never been an attempt to connect this knowledge in a one-stop shop for people and leaders working across tech, nor has there been an effort to catalyze DEI outcomes through collaborative industry-wide action. DEI can't be solved by one company or leader; it requires long-term collective effort.The ACT Report calls for a new paradigm in DEI that is holistic, collective, and long-term. Tech's current approach is often dispersed, individual, and short-term. Despite important progress in DEI, tech companies are too often reduced to poaching each other's talent from underrepresented groups. The paradigm shift described in the ACT Report fundamentally requires a shift in thought and behavior. It is based on values, and provides a blueprint to indivisibly link DEI strategy and business strategy. Companies must bring a business approach to inclusion, and an inclusive approach to business. In other words, DEI and business strategies can no longer be separate. The ACT Report explains what this means in practice.Making the tech industry more inclusive requires a systemic response to a systemic problem. The foundational system that impacts employment opportunity is education. The tech industry, like other industries, must deliver early intervention measures at scale to drive equity from cradle to career. That means tackling educational inequity generally, and increasing access to computer science education specifically.

2015 Commercial Space Industry Snapshot as Seen Through the Eyes of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS)

The International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) is a nonprofit independently run annual event, that has taken place these past 11 years, whose speakers capture the growth and diversification of the global commercial space industry in the form of short powerful talks. Hence, it was appropriate that a 2015 snapshot of the commercial space industry should look at this body of experience and knowledge. The key developments, the key players and an accurate state of the industry are hereby presented through the eyes of the ISPCS from this past eleventh symposium that spanned two days and was held in New Mexico. The latest developments include the Lynx, the crewed Dragon, LauncherOne, and the Dream Chaser®

Enhancing Software Development in the MIS Curriculum using Pair Programming

Management Information Systems (MIS) majors often must perfect their programming skills with one course which can be a daunting task. In an effort to enhance the software development abilities of MIS majors a pair programming lab experiment was conducted in an introductory software development course to determine if that technique would produce benefits for the MIS curriculum. Pair programming experiments are often performed with Computer Science majors but rarely with MIS majors. The researchers’ observations as well as participant’s responses to a survey questionnaire were analyzed after the experiment. The results indicated that pair programming may be beneficial as a pedagogical tool to a MIS students’ ability to create programs using high-level concepts. Additionally, researcher observations revealed pairs worked collaboratively to produce the program while actively communicating and enjoying the process