Invited Speaker: Valerie Barr

On October 6, CS Women held a special lunch sponsored by Prof. Lori Clarke for Invited Speaker Prof. Valerie Barr. Prof. Barr. Later that day Prof. Barr gave a talk on curricular changes to the Computer Science program that Union College has made under her direction.

Thanks to our Scribe, Sofya Vorotnikova, for her excellent notes!

Invited speaker: Valerie Barr

Valerie Barr is a professor at Union College and is currently serving as chair of the ACM Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W). Having an electrical engineer as her father and a teacher and activist as her mother, Valerie Barr is a perfect synthesis of her parents: a computer scientist who cares about people and is trying to change the world. She attended Mount Holyoke College as an undergraduate and later received her Masters degree from New York University and PhD from Rutgers University.

During the lunch, Valerie Barr and members of the CS Women group discussed such topics as:

• experiences attending a women’s college
• ACM-W organization and work as a chair
• getting more women involved in computing: reaching out to middle school and high school students, working and volunteering for ACM-W, using social media to spread information about the issue
• the influence of parents and teachers on young girls and their future involvement in STEM fields, the importance of good teacher education
• the importance of maintaining an academic record and scientific credibility while being involved in social work