| | MARCH 20188CIOReviewLOVE IT OR LIST IT: RENOVATING STEMBy Paige Francis, Associate CIO, University of ArkansasPer the US Census, women outnumber men by a hair in the United States. Within higher education, the divide is much greater given women routinely outnumber men in both college enrollment and graduation rates by double digits. Despite this, only 18 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees are awarded to women. That number shrinks further at top research universities. According to The Tambellini Group, women are becoming invisible in the thriving technology and computing sector. The very sector with the highest starting salaries, 35 percent increased the likelihood to have a job, and a nearly recession-proof industry anticipating job growth between 12-37 percent through 2022.Why should we care? We hear time and time again that a strong, sustainable workforce needs to reflect a population; people like seeing people `like them'. Meredith Lowry, Patent Attorney for Wright, Lindsey, Jennings and co-chair of the 2017 NWA Tech Summit, states, "With technology, like with most things in life, there isn't a one-size-fits-all model. It's imperative that we have more female and diverse voices in constructing technology solutions to help address problems faced by our entire population, rather than a discrete segment."A consumer wants a product designed for them that is attractive to them. For that to happen, we need a workforce with representative insight. As everything these days seems to have some level of connective tissue--thick or thin--attached to technology, clearly, input for design, creation, marketing, service needs to be reflective of the population. The question is and continues to be, how do we attract more women to STEM, to technology leadership, to technical fields?Despite the exhaustive current outreach within the industry, K-12, summer camps, kids' toys, you name it, it's not working. How are we investing so much time, energy, publicity, and funding resulting in so little movement in the right direction? Within higher-education, and education in general, I do believe we are in a unique position to dramatically improve tech career adoption for all genders knowing that Paige Francis
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