Home / News & Events / News - Full Story
Diversity Report to Impact IST’s New Strategic Plan
04/09/2008
by Charles DuBois
IST hopes to diversify its student body by more than threefold, according to emerging goals in the college’s new strategic plan, now under development. by Charles DuBois
By taking initiatives that range from recruiting to retention and that impact program offerings, curriculum and teaching methods, IST hopes to significantly increase the percentage of women and minority students from the current 12 percent. Not only will this broaden learning opportunities for these groups, it will enrich the experience of the IST student body overall, and provide society with a broader pool of emerging talent when future classes graduate.
Integral to the strategic plan’s developing diversity concepts is Encouraging Greater Gender and Ethnic Diversity in the Undergraduate Population of the College of Information Sciences and Technology , a study released earlier this year by an eight-person task force under the leadership Dr. Eileen Trauth, associate dean for diversity, outreach, and international engagement.
Now in rough draft form, the college’s new strategic plan will be finalized by July 1. It will serve as IST’s overall roadmap from 2009 to 2014. Work on it began last fall with a college-wide faculty-staff brainstorming session.
Among the ideas emerging from early discussions of the plan is the possibility of an IST bachelor of the arts degree meant to appeal to an array of students, including those interested in studying law and medicine and tackling careers in the media, communications, and art, as well as fields where informatics is key, such as the sciences and business.
The under-representation of women and minorities in the information technology field goes far beyond Penn State and has been an issue for some time. In the mid-1990s, the Computing Research Association’s Taulbee Survey revealed low enrollments of women nationwide in college-level computer science-computer engineering programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
At the same time, the percentage of women and African Americans in the IT workforce has been slipping. As cited in the report of the IST Diversity Task Force, the figures for women and blacks fell from 41 percent to 34.9 percent and from 9.1 percent to 8.2 percent, respectively, between 1996 and 2002. Another study referenced by the task force shows that the percentage of women in IT was disproportionately small when compared to their proportion of the American workforce overall.
IST’s task force was created in April 2007 to study in depth the diversity issues facing the college. Over the course of the next eight months, the task force examined a broad range of factors that potentially impact the recruitment and retention of women and minorities in the college.
The study delved into the classroom experience for under-represented students. Creative ideas from faculty members to establish a more inclusive environment were outlined. Ways to encourage more Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) to discover IST were detailed.
The task force report explored the curriculum and offered ideas for potential modifications and looked into the implications of the college’s emphasis on team projects on the student experience. Suggestions were offered for marketing of the college’s programs, including the need to communicate to the parents of prospective students. Recommendations were included to increase retention and ideas were offered for professional development of the faculty and staff.
A number of the report’s findings are already being acted on through the IST Office of Diversity, Outreach, and International Engagement.
Serving with Dr. Trauth on the diversity task force were these IST personnel Erica Garner, coordinator for diversity outreach and engagement; Haiyan Huang, research assistant; Brent Hurley, DUS coordinator; Lynette Kvasny, assistant professor; Lisa Lenze, director of learning initiatives; Madhu Reddy, assistant professor; and Stan Supon, assistant dean for undergraduate programs. Providing perspective from the Penn State College of Engineering was Amy Freeman, assistant dean for engineering diversity.
