GEM Project - Inspiring and Motivating Girls Toward Careers in Information Technology
The Girl Empowerment and Mentoring (GEM) for Computing Project aims to inspire middle and high school girls towards computing in post-secondary education by (1) empowering them with skills and interest for IT, and (2) mentoring them to improve their self-efficacy and motivation for a career in IT.
Specifically, we will establish a comprehensive state-wide writing program and contest where
- secondary school girls collaborate to create learning material on the use of computing in real-world applications,
- female students at our Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Department will be recruited to serve as big sisters to mentor the participants throughout the writing process,
- CSE faculty will be recruited to judge the learning material entries, and the winners will be awarded scholarships to attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) to study CS.
Each learning material is required to include a well organized tutorial on a particular CS topic (such as Artificial Intelligence) and an insightful illustration of the use of the topic in a real-world application (such as Intelligent Tutoring Systems). See the Winning Essays from last years contest.
Important Dates
- April 1, 2010 - Contest Concludes
- April TBD - Awards Ceremony & Reception @ Schorr Center
