*After spending a summer working in Redmond, the junior class women of Brown University’s computer science department find new confidence.*
They can field their own baseball team, with nine women in all — a group small enough to fit around a large lunch table at The Commons, but large enough to make for vibrant conversation. But baseball isn’t what these nine women all have in common – it’s computer science.
Typical conversation topics amongst the interns include favorite classes and professors at Brown, ruminations of what college majors they started out pursuing (engineering, math, Greek and Latin, linguistics, neuroscience), and the impact of being part of a minority in the computer science field.
Nell Elliott has been the only female in many of her classes as well. “It’s sometimes kind of hard because people have higher expectations of you. And if you miss class, of course it will be noticed.”
Elliott, whose father is a computer science professor, had planned to be a math major, which required an entry-level computer science course.
About the image: Brown University Students Intern at Microsoft. Brown University computer science students share their stories about spending their summer interning at Microsoft. Image credit: Microsoft
“That was by far my favorite class I took freshman year at Brown,” she says. “I fell completely in love with making these elegant, practical solutions. But I wasn’t really hooked until theoretical computer science. In theory I found a topic I felt like I had a talent for. That was what got me.”
Elliott says that she wasn’t impressed by the recruiting from other large companies, but found Yin Lu, Microsoft’s recruiter, engaging and invested.
“She knows who everyone is, is actually interested in the students she works with, and is really great about setting students up to talk to people who will be helpful and who will have insight into the specific problems or concerns a specific student has when applying for an internship or deciding among internship options,” Elliott says.
About the image: Yin Lu, Microsoft College Recruiter. Yin Lu, the recruiter who helped bring the Brown University students to Microsoft for the summer. Image credit: Microsoft
Lu’s relationship building with the women at Brown made a difference. Last year, there was one female intern from Brown. The intern, Laura Parkinson, had such a good experience that she went back and helped recruit the rest of her classmates.
“They are extraordinary women who are going to be world changers,” Lu says of the Brown women.
Recruiters push to find top talent for internships but also to find a diverse range of college students. “Diversity is reflected in the way we think, ‘How are we smart in different ways?'” Lu says. “These interns offer such a diversity of smartness, from user experience and researching to prototyping, coding, and testing. It’s not about their gender but how and why they’ve found their passion in pursuing computer science and what that means for the creation of software.”
After spending a summer working in Redmond (as well as hiking, biking, barbecuing, and hanging out), the women have a clearer picture of what they want for themselves.
Megan Hugdahl says her internship gave her a lot of respect for the “complexity of Microsoft products,” and Lu Zeng says she has a new-found love for Visual Studio.
Avitabile said she had dismissed the idea of working at a technology company because she didn’t think she was capable of it.
*Source: Microsoft