100 Girls of Courage (OPINION)

I sat within the light-filled, airy atrium of the One West Mountain building in Fayetteville on Aug. 8, watching 30 girls busily typing HTML code, creating websites on Plunker. They ranged from fifth- to 12th-graders, from schools (and one homeschool) throughout the region, and their focused efforts left me feeling hopeful about our region’s future.

Overall, we’re not sufficiently training our girls to tackle the tough engineering and computing demands ahead.

At Selling to the Masses, we scrutinize everything through the lens of retail, because Northwest Arkansas to us exists at the centermost of the retailing universe. The retail industry is more dependent upon coding/computer sciences/technology than ever, yet our region is behind pace with the already-lagging U.S. in producing computer engineers.

The demand here far outweighs talent, so area employers tell me they must look outside the U.S. to fill many tech jobs. But here, a quiet yet intentional movement is engaging girls in coding, aka computer programming.

Only 11 percent of computer engineering students at the University of Arkansas are female. The national figure is 18 percent, still deficient.

Startup Junkie Consulting organized the four-hour workshop as part of the 100 Girls of Code movement; they committed to introducing 100 girls in our region to coding within one year. This was the second event for 2015, and most major public school districts were represented (and Haas Hall Academy, St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School, NWA Classical Academy and Shiloh Christian School).

By the session’s end, each girl had created a Web page about a personal interest. They understood foundational vocabulary and were empowered to explore coding on their own.

Some girls told me they hope advanced classes will be added, as they’re gobbling up what’s available: the UA’s Engineering Girls Camp, Lil Miss Coder (founded by a local teacher), Khan Academy and hourofcode.com. Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has challenged girls in every country to participate in the Hour of Code, Dec. 7-13.

The instructors at the Startup Junkie event were passionate and professional coders.

Anh Au stumbled upon coding when Myspace was the rage. She didn’t like being limited to standard themes, so she figured out how to tweak them.

Au didn’t realize she had just used HTML to code; she knew only that it was fun and she liked the sense of control. She would later be one of three females to graduate from the UA with a degree in computer engineering in 2014.

Another of those three, Brenna Blackwell, was also an instructor at the event. Blackwell is a mobile app developer with RevUnit in Bentonville. Au is now a coder for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Instructor Quita Moreland is a systems engineer for Walmart, and graduated from Purdue University, where she was often the lone female in large classes.

“Females in technology are scared,” as the males have often dabbled with code throughout high school and are extra confident, she told me. “When I got to college, a lot of the guys were already Cisco certified and it was intimidating.”

Dr. Susan Gauch, head of computer science and engineering at the UA from 2007 to 2015 (she now teaches again), told me she was pleased by the turnout. The field is wide open for females. There is no glass ceiling. The pay is great, often better than for men, and the jobs are ultra-flexible — often you can work from home after starting a family.

Gauch said she asks girls whether they like jigsaw puzzles and baking, as both require patience and doing things step-by-step. Those inclinations may indicate a logical mind, which is needed for coding. She recommends a documentary, “She++,” available on YouTube and at sheplusplus.org.

Adults shouldn’t wait for girls to discover coding themselves. Expose them to the skill through classes, mentors and internships, and watch to see if they respond favorably.

For their sake, and for our region’s. 

Robin Mero is content director for Bentonville-based Selling to the Masses, which serves as a destination for resources to help early-stage, consumer-product companies get and stay on the shelves of the country’s top retailers. She can be reached at [email protected].