Black Girls Code founder delivers important message at Raikes School

Black Girls Code: a bold name for a bold organization. Kimberly Bryant founded the San Francisco-based nonprofit last year with a mission to close the gap of women and people of color in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. She is getting young girls interested in technology by introducing them to programming. After a successful…

About the author: Nate Lowry is a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Raikes School of Computer Science and Management graduate and developer for EliteForm, a Nebraska Global company.


Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant speaks in Lincoln, Neb. in earlier this month.

Black Girls Code: a bold name for a bold organization. Kimberly Bryant founded the San Francisco-based nonprofit last year with a mission to close the gap of women and people of color in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) fields. She is getting young girls interested in technology by introducing them to programming. After a successful year of holding workshops across the nation and abroad to introduce thousands of girls to tech and fresh off presenting at South by Southwest, she made a stop last week in Lincoln to speak to students at the University of Nebraska‘s Raikes School of Computer Science and Management.

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To be honest, there are currently zero girls of color in the Raikes School. It, like many computer science programs, is predominantly made up of white males. Things weren’t always like this. Women used to make up as much as 60 percent of computer scientists as recently as the 1960s. Through her research, she has found that 70 percent of middle school girls said they would be interested in computer science, yet now only 0.3 percent of girls entering college are choosing computer science. What happened?

Bryant addressed some of this in her presentation. It starts early. Girls are sent messages from Barbie to their teachers that “Maybe math and science isn’t for you.” There also are serious gaps in our education system. I graduated high school with a class of 35 and thought I was disadvantaged because we only had one computer science class. It turns out many larger schools still don’t have any computer science classes.

So, why the Raikes School? As Bryant put it, these are the future leaders and decision makers that can help close that gap. They can get involved in their community, push for changes in education and create software to help enable education for everyone.

There are other ways to make an impact now. It takes time and hard work. Nebraska Global, the event’s sponsor, has worked with a number of students and organizations to advance the cause, including prepping donated computers for use at the Malone Community Center, teaching summer classes for Lincoln Public Schools, helping the Girl Scouts launch model rockets and inviting high school students to intern with them.

What can you do?

To learn more, check out this video about Black Girls Code:

 

Credits: Video from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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