PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - Aug 7, 2012) - The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology announced today the 2012 A. Richard Newton Educator Award winner is Barbara Ericson, Director of Computer Science Outreach for Georgia Tech College of Computing. This award recognizes teaching practices, techniques or innovative and new education approaches that attract girls and women to math, computing, and engineering. The award recognizes the educators, either individuals or teams, as well as the practices in K12 or undergraduate education.
Barbara Ericson is passionate about engaging girls in computing and recognizes that girls must be exposed to computing at an earlier age. She creates and disseminates outreach models that are sustainable and effective. She works on a state level as co-PI for NSF's Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance, "Georgia Computes!" and on a national level through the Advanced Placement Computer Science Development Committee and the NCWIT K-12 Alliance.
Barbara Ericson has provided computer science professional development to hundreds of teachers in Georgia; 36% of high schools in Georgia have a teacher that has taken a workshop with her, and those schools produce 56% of all introductory computing students. The impact is visible: in the six years of "Georgia Computes!," the number of women taking AP CS Level A in the state has increased 126%.
She has developed summer camp programs at Georgia Tech for predominantly female and under-represented minority students, and through "Georgia Computes!" she has offered workshops to others on her summer camp model and curricula, and has held a seed grant competition to get new camps started. As a result, 11 new summer camp programs have been created around Georgia through her model. In 2011, over 50 weeks of computing summer camps were offered in Georgia, and 2012 featured over 700 spots for computing summer campers.
The award will be presented on October 4, 2012, at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Baltimore, Maryland. The world's largest gathering of women in computing in industry, academia, and government the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a four-day technical conference designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Conference registration is now open. For more information, go to www.gracehopper.org.
About the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI)
The Anita Borg Institute provides resources and programs to help industry, academia, and government recruit, retain, and develop women leaders in high-tech fields, resulting in higher levels of technological innovation. Our programs serve high-tech women by creating a community and providing tools to help them develop their careers. The Anita Borg Institute is a not-for-profit 501(c) 3 charitable organization. Partners include: Google, HP, Microsoft, Amazon, CA Technologies, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, First Republic Bank, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Lockheed Martin, Marvell, National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, NetApp, SAP, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Thomson Reuters, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Broadcom, Neustar, Raytheon, and Yahoo! For more information, visit www.anitaborg.org
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