Prof. Mihaela Sabin

Women in Tech: Facts, Barriers, and Call to Action

Diversity benefits the society and economy. It expands the qualified
employee pool, improves the bottom line, enhances innovation, and promotes
equality. The fast-growing Computing and Engineering (C&E) sectors
have highly paid jobs, but relatively few C&E graduates. For the most
part, the percentage of computing occupations held by women has been
declining from 36% in 1991 to 25% today. Women¹s share of computing
bachelor¹s degrees is at an all-time low of 18%.

New Hampshire¹s goal of doubling the number of STEM educated graduates by
2025 cannot be achieved without focused efforts to improve participation
of women in STEM majors and careers. To respond to the challenge of
closing the gender diversity gap in tech, we need to understand key
barriers in the workplace, make the business case for diversity in tech,
and motivate colleagues and others to advocate for and act as change
agents. In this talk we¹ll synthesize compelling facts that tell the story
about the current state of affairs for women in tech, discuss some
barriers, and share promising practices for addressing them.

Biography:

Mihaela Sabin is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Computing Technology Program in the Division of Science and Technology at UNH Manchester. Her research interests are computing education, open content and open source software, public engagement models and assessment, and constraint satisfaction modeling, programming, and library software.

Sabin teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in application software development, web systems, databases, open sources software, and mobile computing. In her classes, Sabin partners with students through inquiry and hands-on learning activities and facilitates transfer of student knowledge and skills to authentic contexts and projects sponsored by community partners. To enhance program curricula, Sabin challenges her students to develop and make available open educational resources. Sabin supervises student research projects that benefit local communities. Her student mentoring focuses on supporting students who have been historically underrepresented in computing, such as women, underrepresented minorities, and people with disabilities.

Sabin is the University liaison for the New Hampshire Chapter of Computer Science Teacher Association, Eastern Regional representative of the ACM SIG Information Technology Education, and member of the Education Committee of the New Hampshire High Tech Council.

Sabin has a M.S. in Computer Science from the "Politehnica" University in Bucharest, Romania, and a M.S for Teachers in College Teaching and Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of New Hampshire.

Prof. Mihaela Sabin

Biography: