{"id":19,"date":"2017-01-25T21:13:38","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T21:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2016\/?p=19"},"modified":"2021-01-08T09:33:25","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T17:33:25","slug":"cs-crusader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2016\/cs-crusader\/","title":{"rendered":"CS Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Computer science Professor Colleen Lewis is<\/strong> something of a social activist superhero whose arch enemy is implicit bias in her field. Though she and others like her have made progress, stereotypes of the male computer \u201cnerd\u201d or its obnoxious younger brother the \u201cbrogrammer\u201d are still prevalent. Lewis challenges her students to recognize and combat these stereotypes through increased awareness.<\/p>\n

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Lewis received the 2016 Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award at the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing. The award recognizes a junior faculty member for high-quality research and significant positive impact on diversity. Ever eager to continue working to broaden participation in computer science, Lewis is already thinking about next steps. In addition to the Grace Hopper conference, she’s eager for students to participate in the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, an event that she says “has a broader definition of diversity and gives consideration to the dimensions of students\u2019 identities and intersections of those dimensions.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOne of the things I think people should learn is what a microaggression is,\u201d says Lewis, referring to a concept that is sometimes also described as \u201cunintended discrimination.\u201d Microaggressions are the use of common social behaviors and expressions that, even when used without conscious malicious intent, can have the same impact as intentional discrimination. Lewis sees understanding this concept as key to her success as a professor and to her students\u2019 success in their careers. \u201cWe each have our own sphere of influence, right?\u201d she asks. \u201cSo you\u2019re going to go out into the world and have a sphere of influence, and how are you going to make positive change in that space? It\u2019s my responsibility to understand how my implicit bias shapes students\u2019 experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m excited to empower Mudders to change the culture of CS and to fight for social justice.
\n\u2013 Colleen Lewis, assistant professor of computer science<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One way Lewis integrates social justice topics into her computer science curriculum is by incorporating the use of a Bechdel test. Named for American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, the test originated as the idea of one of Bechdel\u2019s comic strip characters, who declares that she only sees a movie if it meets the following requirements: It has to have at least two female characters, the two characters must talk to each other, and the characters\u2019 conversations must be about something other than men. Students working on graph problems use a movie script to build a graph that describes who talks to whom. \u201cThey are then able to run statistics on the graph, and one of the things they can test is the Bechdel test,\u201d Lewis explains. \u201cThis is a way that they\u2019re still just learning the exact same graphalgorithm content, but it\u2019s imbedding these broader ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another way Lewis integrates teaching students how to understand implicit bias is in the software engineering class where students work in teams and evaluate each other. \u201cWe talk really explicitly about the ways in which our evaluations of people are not shaped by pure metrics,\u201d Lewis says, \u201cthey\u2019re shaped by a perception of the contributions this type of person might make. We\u2019re surrounded by stereotypes, and students need to understand how those stereotypes can shape their evaluations, even though those evaluations might feel unbiased.\u201d<\/p>\n

If all this sounds more like behavioral science than computer science, perhaps that\u2019s because considering topics like racial equity and feminism has traditionally been the job of humanities professors while the STEM professors focused more on STEM. Lewis believes that there is as much opportunity to address these topics through science as there is through art or literature. By understanding the mechanics of implicit bias and showing her students how to do the same, she has contributed to Harvey Mudd\u2019s intentional process of altering the culture of computer science to remove cultural and structural barriers that discourage participation. \u201cI\u2019m excited to empower Mudders to change the culture of CS and to fight for social justice\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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