[sdiy] Female sdiy'ers

[Aaron Lanterman]

On Jun 16, 2009, at 11:38 AM, Ian Fritz wrote:

> But I think there is a case for them being somewhat predisposed to  
> other fields. I think, for example, there are many more females in  
> the softer sciences, such as biology, psychology, etc.  So I'd say  
> there seem to be natural differences in interests but not in  
> intelligence or ability.


The sophomore-level "Introduction to Signal Processing" class I teach  
is required of both Electrical and Computer Majors _and_ Biomedical  
Engineering majors. Since BME has historically not offered very many  
BME classes in the summer, the summer session of 2025 tends to be  
dominated by Biomed students - about 3/4 of the class is Biomed in the  
summer.

When I teach in the summer, the male-female ratio is probably around 3  
to 2. In the fall or spring, which it's dominated by ECE majors, it's  
probably more like 10 to 1.

Computer Science departments around the country have had plummeting  
enrollments in general. Our College of Computing recently went through  
a major restructuring and rebranding effort, and female enrollment  
shot up. Interestingly, they didn't really change the core of the  
material - they just did a better job at putting the CS material into  
societal context.

- Aaron