Professor Fountain’s panel, “Leading Experts Speak: Why women are turned off by technology and how to overcome it” brought together researchers and industry professionals to discuss the gender gap in IT education and employment. Panelists discussed the challenges of being a women in an IT field, the benefits of IT skills in today’s workplace, juggling work and family commitments, and how to attract women to the IT field.

Videos of both the panel and the day’s keynote lecture are available at the CAITE website: http://caite.cs.umass.edu

Under CAITE, WITIA will help to will pilot a series of outreach programs, identify best practices and disseminate, deploy, extend and institutionalize those best practices statewide and nationally. WITIA will post CAITE materials in our databases as they are developed, so be sure to check back often: http://witia.net/Resources/

Other partners in this project include: the Commonwealth Information Technology Initiative (CITI), the Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Center (BATEC), regional Louis Stokes Alliances and NSF EGEP programs, Springfield Technical Community College, Bristol Community College, and other partnerships and initiatives focused on information technology education and STEM pipeline issues.

For an article on CAITE visit here:
http://www.umass.edu/loop/talkingpoints/articles/49097.php

CAITE members: you can visit the CAITE section of WITIA here:
http://www.witia.net/caite