ABSTRACT
The number of women and minorities earning a bachelor’s degree in information technology-related fields has been dropping steadily since the mid-1980’s, in contrast with the general trends in graduation rates. According to the 2001–2002 Taulbee Report (https://www.cra.org/statistics/home.html" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.cra.org/statistics/home.html), 82% of bachelor’s degrees in computer science (CS) during this period were awarded to males, compared with 18% to females. The majority of degree recipients were White/non-Hispanic (58%) or Asian/Pacific Islanders (22%). In order to better understand the factors that predict achievement and retention of women and minorities in undergraduate CS programs, the study presented in this poster investigated factors that predict performance in undergraduate CS courses at a large university, and compared male and female students, minority (African American) and majority (White and Asian American) students with respect to these factors, Although several studies have examined gender differences in undergraduate CS programs in the past decade, studies that consider race are rare, largely due to the difficulty of studying under-represented groups (sample sizes tend to be too small for statistical analysis).
