[Intro music and cross talk]
Hi everyone! My name is Jule, I'm a second year PhD student studying computer
science here at the University of Michigan. My area of concentration is
artificial intelligence and this is my first vlog. So today I'm going to talk
about what it's like being a female in the male-dominated field of computer
science here at the University of Michigan. So let's start with the facts.
There are 28 percent females in the doctoral program in engineering on a
whole and there's 22 percent in computer science engineering. So that means if you
walk into a classroom of about 25 people you can expect about 6 of them to be
female. So this isn't a great number, it feels lonely at times, kind of
isolating, especially walking down the hallway just not seeing a lot of people
who look like you that you can identify with. The problem gets even worse at a
faculty level. Out of the 102 CSE core faculty, only 17 of them are
female, so that's about 16%.
So there's a few unique challenges that females in male dominated fields have
to combat. One of those is unconscious bias. Unconscious biases are the
stereotypes and kind of learned associations that you have unconsciously
that kind of pop up in your day to day life.
There's actually a test you can take which I've linked below that shows
you if you have any of these unconscious biases.
So I actually took the quiz and I
am unconsciously biased towards women in science, which is unfortunate but it
makes sense based on kind of what I've seen and experienced. There's more men in
science than women, and so I have an unconscious bias to associate men with
science more than women. An important thing about unconscious bias is
realizing you have it. Once you realize you have it you can push back against it
and hopefully make meaningful differences in the world. Another
challenge that women in a male-dominated field experience a lot is Impostor
Syndrome. Impostor Syndrome is the inability to believe that you deserve
the success you have. So while everyone can feel Impostor Syndrome and lots of
people do, it's especially prevalent with minorities, including gender minorities
in computer science. The best way I've learned to handle Impostor Syndrome is
to say the thoughts out loud. A lot of the time they aren't reasonable and
they're a bit silly, so when I say them out loud I hear that or talking to
someone they can tell me that and then I can have more reasonable and true
thoughts. So for example sometimes I think, oh the admission committee must
have made a mistake letting me into the grad program. So I say this out loud and
it sounds kind of silly, right? The admissions committee is competent,
they're intelligent, and they let me in for a reason.
So now I want to talk about some of the resources and things specifically in computer science
engineering here at Michigan, that I've utilized to help make the experience
better. So one of those things is Excel Plus, which is a gender minority support
group for computer science engineering graduate students. I'm really happy that
Michigan has this group and supports it. Not every graduate program does. I'm
I'm actually the co-social chair for Excel Plus, so that means I organize social
events and also run the mentorship program.
I've really enjoyed a few different aspects of Excel plus, one of them being
the socials. So these happen every two weeks, we bring snacks, some coloring,
different things like that and people can drop by whenever they have time, and
these have been really great because I've gotten to know a lot of the women
in the department and so it feels like there's a lot more than just 22%. So it
makes the department feel smaller, makes me feel more welcomed and included.
So for round tables they bring in successful female professors or people
in industry and they come and have lunch with us,
and talk about kind of how they got to where they are. This is really great
because it gives me role models and it helps me see a path I could take to
become like that.
Another great thing at Michigan is just the faculty in general,
both female and male professors have been extremely welcoming. A lot of them
care a lot about diversity and creating a welcoming community which has been
really nice. Many of them do outreach events to try to get more females and
other underrepresented students into computer science and those have been
really fun to help out with and just to see happen.
So while being in a
male-dominated field can be difficult, there is a way to make the experience
better.