The Washington Post ran an article a few weeks ago titled 'Women flocking to statistics, the newly hot, high-tech field of data science'. Matt Dwyer, UNL's Computer Science and Engineering Department Chair, was interviewed for the article.
Click here to read it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/women-flocking-to-statistics-the-new-hot-high-tech-field-of-data-science/2014/12/19/f3e2e486-62ed-11e4-9fdc-d43b053ecb4d_story.html?wprss=rss_national
More than 40 percent of degrees in statistics go to women and they make up 40 percent of the statistics department faculty poised to move into tenured positions. While it's great that women are interested in statistics, key players at UNL are trying to attract women to other STEM fields such as computer science and math and they are taking note from what has been happing in the statistics field.
Earlier this year, UNL’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering became one of the 15 institutions in the nation to take part in the Building Recruiting and Inclusion for Diversity (BRAID initiative), a nationwide initiative to recruit more women and underrepresented minorities to the computer science field.
In the Washington Post article, Matt Dwyer said “There’s a lot of good data that shows when you have a team with a diversity of experiences, a diversity of training and diversity of backgrounds, that leads you to consider a wider set of options and whenever you consider a wider set of options, you tend to pick better solutions.”
Judy Walker, UNL's Math Department Chair, was also featured in the Washington Post article. Hopefully the new initiatives work and we'll begin to see more women entering all STEM fields, not just statistics.