Strength in numbers: a community-first approach to keeping college women in tech
In Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boy’s Club of Silicon Valley, Emily Chang tells the story of how gender bias became encoded in Silicon Valley. Amidst a shortage of tech talent in the ’60s, a software company enlisted psychologists to identify the ideal engineer in a bid to accelerate the recruitment process. After surveying a mostly male sample of software engineers, they determined that the most satisfied programmers “don’t like people.” This was the genesis of the now-commonplace stereotype that programming is a lone-wolf endeavor and that women do not belong in computer science (CS).
Duke isn’t immune to this pervasive belief — a 2017 Duke Chronicle article found that women make up 47 percent of CS101: Introduction to CS, but only 27 percent of CS230: Discrete Math for CS, a higher-level course which is mandatory for the computer science major.
Against this backdrop, the Duke Technology Scholars program (DTech) was founded in 2016 to inspire a more diverse group of Duke students to choose careers in CS and electrical and computer engineering (ECE). The program starts in the summer and continues into the academic year and beyond Duke.
Over the summer, Duke women in tech live together as they complete a paid software engineering internship in one of four DTech hubs (the Bay Area, Chicago, Research Triangle Park, and, for the first time in 2019, Seattle). Other features of the program include mentorship matching and professional development events, and women who have done the program stay connected well beyond graduation. The program’s scholar headcount has doubled year on year since it began, with 10 scholars in 2016, 34 in 2017 and 64 in 2018.
A community-driven approach to diversity
I spoke to three DTech alums who all agreed that DTech’s community living aspect is far and away the most important feature of the program. While many think of free housing as just a perk of the program, Monica Jenkins, Founder and Executive Director of DTech, said that she actively selects against applicants who lack a commitment to being a part of a supportive community. This reflects her belief in the community-building function of DTech’s residential component.
“This isn’t going to happen from one person going it alone,” Monica said. “I really believe that if women all pull together, support one another through the ups and downs, then we will make progress and create change.”
By living together in a house over the course of the summer, DTech scholars eased into the experience of working and living independently. “It’s so different going from living on Duke’s campus to living off campus, in a house for the first time, working,” said Maddie Nelson (P’19), who interned at Fanatics the summer of 2017 in the Silicon Valley hub. “For people that had only ever lived at home or at Duke, it was a huge adjustment that was made far easier because of DTech.”
“You’ll come back to Duke and it feels like you have a family” — Cathy Chi
DTech scholars also become each other’s support network throughout the summer. Whether it’s sharing successes at work with each other, talking through problems, or exploring a new city as a group over the weekend, program participants build strong relationships with each other that enable them to grow together and be successful. “You’ll come back to Duke and it feels like you have a family,” said Cathy Chi (T’19), who interned at Atlassian last summer in the Silicon Valley DTech hub.
Similarly, Carly Levi (T’19), who was a DTech scholar in both the Silicon Valley and Chicago hubs, said that the 11 girls she lived with in the Chicago hub last summer are now some of her closest friends at Duke. “Without the residential aspect, DTech wouldn’t be the organization that it is today,” Carly said.
“Suddenly, my classes weren’t 50 percent women anymore. It was like, wow, where did all the women go?” — Maddie Nelson
Those relationships become especially important after the summer ends and participants return to school. The summer between sophomore and junior year is often pivotal in students’ decisions to stick with computer science as an academic major and career path. DTech women who do the program and an internship as rising juniors gain technical chops and relationships with other Duke women in tech that give them the confidence, going into junior year, to stay the course.
“It wasn’t until junior fall when I got back on campus and I looked around that suddenly, my classes weren’t 50 percent women anymore. It was like, wow, where did all the women go?” Maddie recalled. Of the women who did remain in Maddie’s and Carly’s CS classes, with whom they collaborated on projects, a majority were fellow DTech cohort members. Their experiences returning to Duke after a summer of DTech showed both of them the strength of the DTech community.
Collaboration, not competition
DTech women are able to lean on their newfound community of women in tech for support and advice amidst the immense competition and pressure of Fall recruiting. Maddie credited the professional events that are planned for each hub over the summer — including a memorable panel at IBM featuring inspirational and successful women in tech — with underscoring the message that “we are a team, and we are in this together; by putting your fellow coworker down you are hurting all women. You’re hurting yourself, and you’re not helping everyone rise up.”
Cathy agreed that she didn’t feel competition at all and said that part of this might simply be the pay-it-forward attitude that Duke students have. “It’s always about bringing everyone up together,” she said.
Additionally, the mentorship that DTech scholars receive for the summer persist well beyond the course of their internships. Cathy’s mentor continues to stay in touch with her, memorably giving her a thoughtful 10-minute call that helped to ground her the night before her Coursera FTE interview.
Women who’ve completed the DTech summer invariably find ways to pay it forward. As a DTech executive board member, Carly went on to initiate a Piazza page for DTech associates and scholars, as well as “office hours” for women to drop in and obtain feedback on their résumé or prepare for upcoming technical interviews. Her favorite initiative has been a panel about negotiating job offers featuring a recruiter at SAS and her mother, a businesswoman — a panel which Cathy affirmed was very helpful. Since stepping down from the executive board, Carly has also taken on a mentorship role to underclassmen. And all three women are frequently asked to sit on panels to share their DTech experience and advice for landing tech internships and jobs.
All three women will continue to pursue tech careers. Carly will enter the tech consulting industry at Deloitte, while Maddie will join Microsoft full-time after a successful internship with them last summer. Cathy nailed her Coursera interview and is excited to work in ed-tech, her field of interest. At some point, Maddie wants to work in a startup and go to business school, and Cathy eventually wants to start her own company. They credit DTech with giving them the resources necessary to determine what a good career fit for them might look like, and the encouragement to pursue their dreams while remaining open to different career possibilities.
For a myriad of reasons, DTech has been a major confidence builder for its participants. Not only has it created a support network that participants have been able to lean on during their internships, but in spite of the competitiveness that so often accompanies tech recruiting at elite institutions, it’s also succeeded in establishing a tight-knit community of women who empower other women. Going into its fourth year of operation, DTech will accept scholars across all four hubs who will work and live together for the summer of 2019. Far from perpetuating the go-it-alone programmer stereotype, DTech aims to show that women thrive best in tech when they work together.
The Duke Technology Scholars program (DTech) promotes diversity amongst Duke undergraduates pursuing degrees in computer science or electrical and computer engineering through relationship-building, mentorship and hands-on experience. Read more about DTech here.
