A typical US college student who is asked to name people who have made significant contributions to computing will likely produce a short, predictable, fairly homogeneous list. To help increase awareness of the diversity of people involved in computing, we introduced a biography project into an introductory non-majors course at a small liberal arts college. With each student exploring and present on the life and contributions of a less well-known contributor to computing, the class is exposed to a number of people that students likely haven’t heard of previously. Moreover, with fairly open-ended requirements for the assignment, we can learn what students find interesting and noteworthy about these individuals, perhaps finding ways to more broadly increase awareness.
Ida Ngambeki Purdue University, Matt Bishop The University of California, Davis, Jun Dai California State University, Sacramento, Phil Nico California Polytechnic State University