UW CSE’s DawgBytes is one of three programs recently selected by mobile marketing company TUNE (formerly HasOffers) and Seattle Women in Technology as beneficiaries of a new partnership that aims to cultivate more women leaders in technology fields. DawgBytes, which hosts girls-only and co-ed summer day camps in computing, in addition to engaging in teacher support, community partnerships and other outreach activities, is part of a long tradition at UW CSE of encouraging women to pursue computer science education and careers.
Each summer, DawgBytes engages 88 middle and high school girls in computer science through our girls-only camps and reaches many more through its co-ed camps, including a session for elementary school students. This is part of a multi-pronged approach aimed at increasing the diversity of our student body and of our industry. We outperform our peers when it comes to cultivating the next generation of women computer scientists, awarding 30 percent of our CS bachelor’s degrees to women (roughly twice the national average). We also have made it a priority to recruit women who are rising stars in the field to the UW CSE faculty, including recent hires Maya Cakmak (robotics), Yejin Choi (natural language processing), Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman (computer vision), Franzi Roesner (security and privacy), and Emina Torlak (programming languages and software engineering).
While UW CSE is a recognized leader in advancing women in computer science education and careers, there is more work to be done. To support our efforts and those of other like-minded organizations, TUNE, in partnership with Seattle WiT, is encouraging donations to DawgBytes, Tech Trek and Ada Developers Academy in the run-up to its big annual event, Postback, which will be held July 23-24 in Seattle.
Read more about the partnership on the TUNE company blog here and check out the details on Postback 2015 here.
Check out our DawgBytes 2015 summer camp lineup here.
Read earlier coverage of UW CSE’s nationally recognized efforts to engage more women in computer science here, here and here.
Many thanks to our friends at TUNE and Seattle Women in Technology for their support!