Jessie Duan
Executive Lead & Cofounder of Girls Teaching Girls to Code
Jessie Duan is the Executive Lead and co-founder of Girls Teaching Girls To Code, an organization that grows high school girls’ interest in Computer Science. She is graduating from Stanford University in June 2015 with a B.S. in Applied Math and M.S. in Computer Science.
What is Girls Teaching Girls to Code?
Girls Teaching Girls To Code is an organization at Stanford University that grows high school girls’ interest in computer science.
In the 3 years since GTGTC began, we’ve reached over 700 high school girls in the Bay Area through a myriad of different events — workshops, panels, company tours, and more. Our largest annual event is Code Camp, a day-long event where 50 Stanford women in computer science introduce 200 high school girls to computer science.
Our goals are to show girls that:
- They can do computer science, and be good at it!
- Computer science is fun, useful, and applicable to many fields
- There are a lot of cool women in computer science
Why did you start it?
In 2011, 11.7% of bachelor’s degrees in computer science were awarded to women. But the gender imbalance starts earlier than that — 20% of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2014 were female.
In our college introductory CS classes, we were hearing a lot of women say that they were intimidated because so many of their male classmates had started programming in high school. We wanted to even the playing field by getting more girls programming before college too.
There are a number of reasons why a high school girl might not choose to take a CS class — CS doesn’t seem “cool”, her friends aren’t taking it, or perhaps no one has just ever encouraged her to pursue STEM. We want to show her that CS is cool, interesting, and fun — so that she has motivation to build her CS abilities, encourage her friends to explore CS, and consider pursuing CS further in college.
What are the challenging aspects of programming education?
Traditionally, introductory computer science classes tend to emphasize the technical aspects of programming, such as speed and efficiency. Assignments ask students to print out prime numbers or determine if a word is an anagram — certainly interesting and difficult, but not particularly useful. Men tend to be interested in the computer itself and what the computer can do, but women tend to be more interested in the applications of a computer. The result is that many women lose interest in their first computer science class. Fortunately, many universities are shifting towards paying more attention to applications in their introductory classes.
In addition, students often enter introductory Computer Science classes at varying levels of experience, because it’s easy for students to code on their own to obtain informal programming experience. In an introductory CS class, a student brand new to computer science can be incredibly intimidated sitting next to a student who claims years of (informal) experience. The difference between these two students shrinks dramatically after a single introductory class, but that initial shock colors that brand-new student’s first semester with CS.
What is the most rewarding aspect of teaching girls to code?
It’s incredibly rewarding to see girls discover that the stereotypes around Computer Science aren’t true — particularly when they then contribute towards breaking these stereotypes. In our post-event surveys, girls often tell us that they’ve realized what they want to do in the future, that they feel encouraged to pursue what they’re passionate about, or just that they want to learn more computer science.
Many of our students go on to start computer science clubs at their high schools, take AP Computer Science classes, and look for CS internships. But not everyone has to do that — we’re perfectly happy if girls check out CS, decide they’re more interested in other things, but know that they can do CS if they want to. To us, success is when high school girls understand what Computer Science is really about and are empowered to see Computer Science as an option.
