Happy 25th Aniversary to CRA-W! This seems like a much-needed and highly impactful program for creating a welcoming environment and providing a variety of support for women in STEM fields.

I still remember attending my first undergraduate meeting about how to get involved in doctoral research – I was in a room of male professors who started telling the women about how important it was to plan our doctoral timelines around having children because we wouldn’t be able to juggle both. With this in mind, I was curious about the content of your programs. Do you discuss and provide training on how to deal with issues of sexism in STEM fields?

Last, how has this program evolved over the past 25 years and how do you think it might continue to evolve as women increasingly enter into STEM fields? Are you finding it easier to amass mentors for younger women?

CRA-W is doing some great work! I appreciate the way you work with women starting with undergraduates and all along their career. I work in high schools and have been teaching computer science to 9th and 10th grade students for a while. Have you thought about adding programs for younger women? I know the young women I work with would love to learn about your programs and see what is possible for them in the field.

I also think the work you do to support educators is very important and your mission to support all underrepresented groups is admirable. How do you work with the other organizations you mentioned to support diversity efforts? Also, how do your members communicate most? Where does the group “live” virtually and how does that space extend your current F2F events?

Hi Pati,

We have discussed the idea of adding programs for younger women. At this time, the most applicable program to women in their high school career, is the Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall Series. It is a webinar series that introduces participants to a leading female researcher from academia or industry. The first 20 minutes are designated for a research presentation. We then move to an open question and answer session. Then we conclude the session with a virtual mentoring activity. Mentoring topics we have discussed are: Building Self Confidence, Why to go to Graduate School, and Finding an advisor. Over the summer we will conduct webinars with current Graduate students as they discuss their research and graduate school experience.

We work with organizations, such as, Access Computing, Coalition to Diversify Computing, IAAMCS, etc., to broaden participation in the CS fields. Our partners assist us in reaching communities within CS that we have not previously contacted. They assist us in running a few of our programs, and provide insight into how we may improve our programs to better suit the underrepresented communities.

Our alumni communicate mostly through our social media groups: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We send information about our programs and activities via tailored mailing lists, Tweets, and Facebook and LinkedIn posts.

Our community lives on our website (cra-w.org) and our social media groups. We are not a membership organization, we are a virtual and physical community that interacts at various conferences (reunions), programs, and virtual forums.

I am very happy to see your focus begins at the undergraduate level. Twenty five years is very impressive! Supporting educators as well as students is very important. Do you have specific curriculum available to the students and educators regarding negotiation strategies to help them navigate an often competitive, male dominated environment?

Important program and well-done video. Thank you. What plans, if any, are in place for growing CRA-W and expanding its impact?

Thanks for asking Avron! We have just added a new program this year with our Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall online talk series (http://cra.org/cra-w/undergrad-town-hall-series/). We hope to reach many students through these talks because they can join from their desk to hear great women speakers. We also are looking closely at how we partner with other alliances working in the STEM field to identify scaling opportunities.

Congratulations on 25 year of successful programs in CRA-W. Very nice video too.