CSC News
NC State Ranks #1 in the Nation in CSC Female Faculty
According to the latest data from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), NC State ranks #1 in the nation in number of female tenure-track/tenured faculty in Departments of Computer Science in Colleges of Engineering.* The department currently has 20 female faculty and several other female adjuncts (14 represented in the picture at right). A very proud department head, Dr. Mladen Vouk, notes “We are thrilled to be in this position of leadership. Our number one priority is always to find the very best faculty candidates available to meet our needs.”
Noting that the department has seven female faculty who are NSF CAREER Award winners and a number considered to be among the leading experts in their field, Vouk says, “We are very fortunate to have attracted so many incredibly gifted and talented female faculty. It speaks highly of the culture and environment within our department.”
In a field traditionally dominated by men, the women of NC State’s Computer Science Department truly flourish both in number and achievement.
NC State computer science is particularly well positioned with some of the nation’s leading authorities in the field including Dr. Laurie Williams, one of the foremost researchers in agile software development and in the security of healthcare IT applications, Dr. Carla D. Savage, a world renowned Mathematician who now serves as the Secretary of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), Dr. Nagiza Samatova, a data analytics expert who has conducted impactful climate change research, and Dr. Helen Gu, who's research recently lead to the launch of InsightFinder.com, a cloud monitoring and system analytics startup.
In recent years, the department has been on a mission to add high-quality teaching professors to the faculty, PhD’s whose primary focus is teaching rather than research. Dr. Sarah Heckman was the first to be hired. Now, four of the six teaching professors are women. These high-quality teaching professors provide a strong educational foundation for all computer science undergraduates.
Associate department head, Dr. Laurie Williams agrees, maintains that a strong female faculty presence, both from a teaching and research perspective, is key to successful women pursuing degrees in Computer Science. “It’s very natural, and I think it has a very positive effect on the student body.”
Computer Science senior, student ambassador and WiCS president, Melissa Novitsky, says the quantity and quality of female faculty has a significant impact on the perception of the department with prospective female students. “It caught my attention when I was considering schools,” says Novitsky. “ NC State computer science appealed to me as a place I could flourish, as a female, because of the incredible female mentors that we have on our faculty. It has a surprising impact on female students to see representation of their gender in the academic faculty.”
*2014/2015 ASEE Tenure-Track/Tenure Faculty Demographics
~Scanlon/Tate~
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