For many computer science professors, their work is their play. They teach the most exciting thing in the world. For Michelle Levesque, an undergraduate student in the program, this enthusiasm is contagious. But you don’t get the bug unless you are a student in computer science, and a lot of female students are missing out. Not very many of them are enrolled in the program.

“They’re certainly countable,” says Levesque of her female classmates. Depending on what specific course you look at, the proportion of female students is “usually one-fifth, one-third at best.” At the graduate level, however, the figures look more promising. “This year at U of T, a third of the graduate level computer science students are female-the highest they’ve had in a long time,” says Levesque.

Still, why are female students generally underrepresented in computer science? “You have to get started at computers pretty young. Most females I know started in university,” says Levesque. Her male peers in the program all began playing around with computers when they were kids. She thinks that the roots can be traced to age 11 or 12, which is when she herself started playing with computers. By university, she believes, it is almost too late for young women who haven’t already developed an interest. “They would have already found something else they have fallen in love with.”

There seems to be an established “guy culture” for computers. “If you’re really involved with computers in your teens, you’re part of the group of, you know, nerds, geeks, hackers,” Levesque explains with good humour. There doesn’t seem to be a “girl culture” during the crucial teenage years when the most important thing is to belong to a group. “If you really immerse yourself in [computers], you’re more of an outcast.”

But the lack of a community does not deter young women like Levesque from pursuing what they really love. When asked about the computer science program at U of T, she enthuses that “you get everything from graphics to artificial intelligence to ‘mathy’ computer programming.” To complement her studies, Levesque works at the Citizen Lab, located at the Munk Centre for International Studies in Trinity College, where students from computer science and political science use electronic technology to explore new ways to promote and protect the rights of global citizens. It is a place where Levesque and her co-workers “write programs that benefit society.”

To help young girls develop an interest in traditionally male-oriented careers in technology, the Computer Science department at U of T is collaborating with IBM Canada in a pilot project called Women in Technology (WIT). Representatives from IBM as well as U of T female computer science students visit elementary school classrooms to facilitate girls-only workshops in website design.

IBM Canada began reaching out to girls at the elementary school level in 1998. Since then, IBM has been paying school visits as well as running technology camps at IBM locations. According to Rena Chenoy, the IBM coordinator for the WIT project, the goal is to build awareness of career opportunities for women in the field of information technology, and to encourage young girls to pursue related disciplines. The WIT project does this by exposing young girls to female role models in the industry.

Responses from female computer science students to volunteer as workshop facilitators have been very positive, says Nina Thiessen, the U of T coordinator for WIT. The project also gives university students the opportunity to meet professionals in their career field. Although the level of enthusiasm from the elementary school girls “has been quite varied,” that is probably more so due to the limited number of computers available in elementary school. There can be as many as 10 girls to one computer, so the students have to take turns in trying out their web designing tricks.

“Brilliant Bubbletea,” a web page designed by a group of young girls during a recent workshop, is posted on the WIT page from the departmental web site at http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ninat/ibm-wit/bubbletea/. The website design workshop is a preliminary step in encouraging more elementary school girls to pursue computer science.

“If you can get them then,” says Levesque, “they will follow through in high school, and in university.”