Computing, diversity and community: fostering the computing culture

How do we attract and retain women in mathematics and science and specifically in computing? Women drop out of every bend of the pipeline and thus lose the opportunity to seek good, appealing and high-paying jobs. Funded by an eight-semester long National Science Foundation grant 1 , the University of Wisconsin (UW) Women and Science program aims to reverse this attrition from the sciences at a point where it is most acute: the introductory courses in the undergraduate science curriculum.This paper focusses on one particular innovation in the computing curriculum: extending the content of a traditional first term computer science course in program design and development to include the culture of computing. The paper gives specific examples of computing artifacts and their uses in any computing classroom. It also shows the connection between teaching the culture of computing and the objectives of the Women and Science project.