Women Increase from 18 to 30% of City College of San Francisco's (CCSF) Computer Networking and Information Technology (CNIT) Program

Quick Facts
Recruitment Numbers	% of female students increased from 18% to 30% in 15 months, with an aggregate enrollment rate of 25.8% over three years since Project inception.
Retention Numbers	Completion rate went from baseline 64% to 90% in spring 2009 after repeated focus on retention with faculty over two years.
Training	CCSF's Leadership Team participated in IWITTS's WomenTech Educators Training. The team included instructors, counselors and key administrators.

Recruitment Strategies

All eight of the CalWomenTech Project community college sites were required to carry out four core recruitment strategies during their first year of participation in the Project. In addition, they could also incorporate custom recruitment strategies into their annual strategic plans. City College of San Francisco (CCSF) successfully completed all of the core recruitment strategies in the recommended timeline and the percentage of women enrolled in Computer Networking and Information Technology (CNIT) increased by 12% in 15 months -- from 18.1% to 30.1%.

The required recruitment strategies included:

• Identifying female role models in computer networking and information technology and getting photos, bios and quotes for IWITTS to place in the CalWomenTech template marketing collateral;

• Distributing recruitment posters, flyers, brochures and a CalWomenTech college website section featuring female role models.

The college carried out additional strategies:

• CCSF has a very large counseling staff with over 100 counselors. The Project key leaders made a presentation to all of the counselors at their monthly meeting and provided them with "Women in CNIT" recruitment brochures and posters with the CCSF CalWomenTech website URL. Distribution of recruitment materials by counselors was then written into CCSF's annual strategic plan as a regular practice. Showed a PowerPoint presentation developed by IWITTS made to appeal to potential female students. See example slides.

• Sending out an email with CNIT program and career information to potential female students (sample email in Outreach Kit as well).

Recruitment Results

Fifteen months into the CalWomenTech Project -- after completing the required recruitment strategies -- CCSF's CNIT program went from a baseline of 18.1% to 30.1% (an increase of 12%) in fall 2008, reaching its second highest percentage of female students in three years of participation in the Project. In spring 2010, the program reached its highest percentage when the average number of women enrolled went to 32.6% -- an increase of almost 15% from baseline. The aggregate enrollment rate for female students during the three years of CCSF's participation is 25.8% -- an increase of 7.6%.

In advanced CNIT courses where students had to complete prerequisite introductory courses, the improvement in recruitment of female students was even more pronounced due to an increased number of women in the pipeline. The aggregate recruitment rate for females in advanced courses over three years is 21.3% -- a 10.9% increase from baseline. The most impressive increase occurred in the advanced courses in spring 2010, when the average number of women increased by 29.7% from 10.3% to 40% -- almost half women.

Retention Strategies

After three CalWomenTech retention trainings over two years with about two-thirds of 22 CNIT faculty members -- including adjunct instructors -- attending, CCSF's retention rates went from 64.1% to 90.3% in spring 2009. The modifications instructors incorporated into their teaching styles based on IWITTS' retention training -- combined with a department-wide commitment to improving completion rates among women (and men) -- became the most important retention strategy for CCSF.

While making national and state conference presentations with IWITTS on CCSF's participation in the CalWomenTech Project, CCSF's key and co-leader described the cultural shift that occurred in their department during the CalWomenTech Project. According to the key and co-leader, this Project provided an incentive for CNIT faculty to come together as a team to work collectively on student success for the first time. The two to three hour retention trainings and brainstorming sessions on the development and implementation of retention strategies in the classroom allowed both fulltime and adjunct faculty members to learn new strategies and share existing ones that had worked for individual instructors.

Some examples of CCSF retention strategies and teaching to both female and male learning styles included:

• A CNIT instructor created, printed and distributed a poster with visual illustrations of all the tools used in computer networking and information technology that faculty could use to help female (and male) students with tool identification and use.

• Recruiting advanced female students to staff open lab times and act as role models and mentors.

• Using YouTube videos to supplement classroom instruction: instructors posted both videos they developed and those they identified on CNIT building block skills female (and male) students would benefit from (e.g. two instructors created a video on converting binary numbers) to use in face-to-face classes, online courses and as extra modules for use outside of class.

Retention Results

CCSF had a baseline retention rate for female CNIT students of 64.1% that went up only slightly to 66.7% in spring 2008 and then down to 45.5% in fall 2008. After a series of retention trainings and brainstorming sessions with faculty, female retention rates went up to 90.3% in spring 2009 -- an increase of 64.4% from baseline!

In fall 2009, female retention rates decreased to 75.5% -- still a gain of 11.4% from baseline. In the aggregate, the average female completion rate is now 69.5% -- an increase of 5.4% over baseline. The CalWomenTech Project has demonstrated that change does not always happen in a straight line and IWITTS and CCSF will carefully monitor external evaluator data and continue to focus on retention with all faculty.

The baseline completion rate for male CNIT students was 72.1% and in fall 2009 -- after the CalWomenTech retention trainings -- it went up to 87.7% (a significant increase of 15.6%). The aggregate male retention rate over the course of the Project is 74% -- a gain of about 2%. The primary retention strategies in the Project -- chosen by the colleges themselves -- have been classroom strategies (e.g. appealing to female interests) versus traditional support strategies such as mentoring, which is why they have impacted the retention of both women and men.

Sustainability

The CalWomenTech Project model was designed to institutionalize gender equity strategies into the Project's community college sites. Now with one year until Project completion, IWITTS has been working with the sites to ensure sustainability beyond the life of the Project.

CCSF plans to continue distributing the "Women in CNIT" posters, email, banner, website section and other outreach collateral developed during the Project. On the retention side, the CNIT instructors have made a commitment to continue using the retention techniques they learned and brainstormed together during the CalWomenTech trainings. A half-day retention CalWomenTech workshop is planned for fall 2010.

Learn more about CCSF's CNIT program.

Written June 2010, three years after City College of San Francisco began the CalWomenTech Project and one year prior to its completion. CCSF is an NSF project partner in the CalWomenTech Project and Carmen Lamha, the Chair of the CNIT Department, serves as Co-Principal Investigator.