HALIFAX, NS—New incentives for women in computer science at Dalhousie have been announced alongside the faculty’s new Here We Code initiative. Now, any woman who chooses to stay in computer science will not be charged tuition for any group project based course that they take.
After successfully bumping the female population of the faculty from 16% in 2017 to 18% in 2022, the next problem is keeping those extra 12 women in the faculty until graduation.
When reached for comment, a representative of the faculty wrote “There’s a huge problem with retention in computer science. Often, because of the environment of exclusion and sexism, women transfer out of the program in their first couple of years. Instead of working to effect meaningful change, we’ve opted to bribe them into staying.”
Second year computer science student Janine Jamieson has admitted that without this new initiative, she would likely switch into another program. “I took a course last year where the guys in my group never even learned my name—for the whole semester! I literally work part time at a tech start up but all they would let me do is write all the reports. If I wasn’t getting these courses for free I’d probably be studying to become a dental assistant or something.”
The initiative has been successful so far, and the faculty plans to keep it in place for the 2022-2023 school year.