Eyes on UMBC

Making a Place For Women on the Web




Joan Korenman, director of UMBC's Center for Women & Information Technology (CWIT), has been honored as one of the Top 25 Women on the Web. The award, given by San Francisco Women on the Web, recognizes the achievements of women who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of technology and women in technology-related fields--recognition Korenman richly deserves.

Korenman, a professor of English and women's studies at UMBC, founded CWIT in 1998 to encourage women to pursue careers in information technology, where they are still under-represented, and to improve online resources for women. The center sponsors a speaker series bringing distinguished female IT professionals to campus and computer certification training scholarships for low-income women. And it created and maintains the CWIT website, which ABCNews.com called "the best resource on women and technology on the web." It includes a carefully selected list of 600 websites on subjects ranging from women's health to the arts and female-techie issues.

Applauding Korenman's inclusion in Top Women on the Web, a commentator on ABCNews.com acknowledged that the 2001 list "nudged out the dot-com divas and the web market wünderkinds and filled in the roster with women devoted to less transitory things--like education, mentoring, and quality content widely distributed."

"Women are in danger of becoming the new illiterates, unprepared for the opportunities and challenges of the Information Age," Korenman says. "CWIT's mission is to achieve women's full participation in all aspects of IT." To learn more, visit www.umbc.edu/cwit/.

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