COMPUTING RESEARCH POLICY BLOG

I try to avoid gratuitous plugging of CRA or CRA activities here, but sometimes something is just too good not to mention. Today the President announced that CRA’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) had won a 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) for their long-running work to address the underrepresentation of women in computer science and engineering.
So today I got to spend a good part of the day hanging around the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the grounds of the White House with CRA-W representatives Jan Cuny (also a CRA-W board member) and CRA-W Co-Chair Mary Jean Harrold (a CRA board member to be) as they received CRA-W’s award in a ceremony headlined by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger. Also attending was CRA-W co-founder, and now ACM President, Maria Klawe. The President was, unfortunately, not able to attend as he was meeting with King Abdullah Bin Al Hussein of Jordan.
In any case, it was a great day for CRA-W. The President, in a note to the awardees read by Marburger, made it very clear that he believes that the innovation necessary to keep the nation flourishing can only be sustained by tapping into a broad and diverse, educated workforce, and that programs like the ones honored today would be the role models. Marburger himself called the organizations honored “exemplars” and leaders in the national effort to more fully develop the Nation’s human resources in science, mathematics and engineering. It was worthy praise for the women of CRA-W, who have been working since 1991 to “increase the number of women involved in computer science and engineering, increase the degree of success they experience, and provide a forum for addressing problems that often fall disproportionately within women’s domain.”
Watch this space for pictures of the event as soon as they are available. The extended entry (linked immediately below) contains the official CRA press release marking the award. Congrats to all the CRA-W participants, past and present!
OSTP also has a press release (pdf).
Update: NSF now has their press release online.

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