From 1999 to 2004,
the Center for Women and Information Technology's Speakers Series
brought distinguished people to UMBC to address issues concerning
gender and information technology from a wide variety of perspectives.
Speakers included local CIO's, professors and authors.
2004 Speaker Series 
On Friday, March 12, 2004, Beth Perlman, Chief Information Officer of Constellation Energy, will give a talk entitled "From Enron to Constellation Energy: An IT Perspective." Ms. Perlman was a high-ranking official at Enron when the company imploded. She will discuss how she moved from Enron to become the CIO of the largest energy company in the United States. Her talk will take place in UMBC's University Commons, Room 330, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.
On Wednesday, April 21, 2004, Susan
Herring, Professor of Information Science at Indiana
University, will give a talk entitled "Feminism, Pornography,
and the World Wide Web". Professor Herring is one of the
world's foremost experts on gender and computer-mediated communication,
a field she helped to create in the early 1990s. After receiving
her Ph.D. in Linguistics at UC Berkeley, she taught at the
University of Texas at Arlington before moving to Indiana
University Bloomington in August 2000. She is the editor of
four collections on computer-mediated communication, the author
of numerous articles on gender and the Internet, and a frequent
speaker nationally and internationally. Her current research
focuses on the representation of women and men in multimedia
computer interfaces, including the Web and multi-user virtual
environments (MUVEs). Her talk will take place on the 7th
floor of UMBC's Albin O. Kuhn Library, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
2002 - 2003 Speaker Series
The first speaker in CWIT's 2002-03 Series was Allan
Fisher, CEO of iCarnegie and former Associate Dean
for Undergraduate Education in the School of Computer Science
at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Fisher is the co-author
of the highly acclaimed new book Unlocking
the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (MIT Press, 2002).
Allan Fisher spoke at UMBC on Tuesday, October 22, 2002. He discussed some of the reasons that women are under-represented in computer science and what can be done to increase women's involvement in this field. He also described the transformation that has occurred at Carnegie Mellon University, where the percentage of female computer science majors has risen from 7% in 1995 to 42% in 2000.
Allan
Fisher's talk is now available on streaming video.
If you don't have Real Player or Media Player, you can download
Real Player here
(to get the free version, click on "Download the Free RealOne
Player Only" in the bottom right-hand corner).
On Friday, April 11, 2003, Marsha Woodbury, Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, gave the second talk in CWIT's 2002-2003 Speakers Series. Her talk was entitled Hot Topics in Computer Ethics. Among the "hot topics" covered were file sharing and intellectual property, the Patriot Acts (I and II), censorship, smart bombs, the E-Bomb, spam, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and more. Dr. Woodbury teaches courses on Ethics and Professionalism in Computing and on Intellectual Property Issues in Computer Science. She is also the author of the book Computer and Information Ethics (Stipes Publishing Company, 2002).
Dr.
Woodbury's talk is now available on streaming video.
(The visual quality of the video is somewhat disappointing.)
Dr. Woodbury has also made her PowerPoint
presentation available.
2001 - 2002 Speaker Series
 Gender Bias in Faculty Hiring, Retention, and Promotion
Alice M. Agogino - February 20, 2002
Alice M. Agogino, Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke at UMBC on Wednesday, February 20, 2002. Her talk, co-sponsored by the College of Engineering, addressed the following questions based on a recent AAAS Symposium organized by Prof. Agogino:
Is there a gender bias in the recruitment and evaluation of women faculty in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) disciplines?
Is there a gender bias in the climate and retention of women faculty in SMET disciplines?
What can be done to promote fair hiring practices and increase the number of women faculty in SMET disciplines?
A video recording of the talk can now be viewed at http://www.umbc.edu/oit/NewMedia/real/cwit022002.ram if you have Real Player, which is available as a free download.
Women's Growing Success as Entrepreneurs in Technology
Sheila Talton-Henderson - March 5, 2002
Sheila Talton-Henderson is Senior Vice President for Marketing and Business Strategy at EDS. Before her recent move to EDS, she was Vice President in charge of the Chicago Critical Technology Practice of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Prior to that, she was president and CEO of Unisource Network Services. Recipient of the "Entrepreneur of the Year" award from the National Federation of Black Women Business Owners, Ms. Talton-Henderson sits on numerous prestigious boards and industry organizations and works with advocacy and networking groups to advance women and minorities in business and high-tech. An interview with her appeared in the April 1, 2000 issue of CIO Magazine.
Ms. Talton-Henderson spoke at UMBC on Tuesday, March 5, 2002.
A
video recording of the talk can now be viewed. If you
have Real Player, which is available as a free
download.
Grrl
Power in the Arts: WOW/EM
Kristine H. Burns - April 16, 2002
Composer and author Kristine H. Burns is Director of the Electronic Music Studies at Florida International University's School of Music and the founder of WOW/EM - Women on the Web / ElectronMedia. Established in 1996, WOW/EM is an award-winning web site for young women interested in creative digital media as well as in science, math, and computers. It features informative articles and pages about the media arts, career choice options, discussions on numerous topics in technology, interviews with women and men working in technology, as well as annotated links to young women's Internet sites. The site also has an affiliated listserv, part of WOW/EM's effort to create a cybercommunity for young women.
Prof. Burns' talk took place on Tuesday, April 16, 2002 at 4:00 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom Lounge.
A video recording of the talk can now be viewed at http://www.umbc.edu/oit/NewMedia/real/cwit041602.ram if you have Real Player, which is available as a free download.
2000 - 2001 Speaker Series
Justine Cassell, Associate Professor at MIT's Media Lab and co-editor of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (1998) and Embodied Conversational Agents (2000), began this year's series. She spoke at UMBC on Wednesday, October 25, 2000. Her talk, entitled (En)gendering IT: Lessons from Videogames for Girls, focused on ways in which designers of IT for women and girls deal with and avoid gender stereotypes. You can now listen to the talk if you have Real Player, which is available for a free download.
Anne Balsamo
was our second speaker. Currently a research scientist at
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Dr. Balsamo is the author
of Technologies of the
Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. She spoke at
UMBC on Tuesday, November 14. Her talk, Gendering
the Technological Imagination: Dispatches from the Edge
of the Gutenberg Galaxy, dealt with her recent museum
exhibit entitled Experiments
in the Future of Reading. This talk is now available
on both audio
and video
if you have Real Player, which is available for a free
download.
Eleanor
Baum, Dean of Engineering at The Cooper Union in
New York, was our first speaker in Spring 2001. An electrical
engineer with a Ph.D. from Polytechnic University, Dr. Baum
has worked in the aerospace industry as well as in academia,
and she consults for both government and industry. She is
also very active in efforts to recruit and retain women
and minorities in the engineering profession and has increased
substantially the number of women pursuing engineering
degrees at Cooper Union. Dr. Baum spoke at UMBC on Wednesday,
February 14, 2001. Her talk, entitled The Face of
the New Engineer, was co-sponsored by UMBC's College
of Engineering. You can now watch and listen to this talk
on video
if you have Real Player, which is available for a free
download.
Lori
Reed, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
at the University of Rhode Island, was our final speaker
in the 2000-2001 series. Dr. Reed received her Ph.D. from
the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, in 2000. Her
research interests focus on media studies and on social
and cultural studies of science and technology, especially
in areas such as gender and technology, computer-mediated
communication, media theory and criticism, and institutional
approaches to the study of media. She spoke at UMBC on Tuesday,
April 3, 2001. Her talk, entitled Computer Addiction
as a Gendered Phenomenon, is now
available on our website.
1999 - 2000 Speaker Series
Tuesday, Oct. 26 - Dr. Anita Borg
"Women and the Future of Technology"
On Tuesday, October 26, 1999, our speaker was Anita Borg, founder and
president of the Institute for Women and Technology and founder of the Systers email list for women in the technical end of computing. The September '99 issue of the IT/business magazine Fast Company has called her "a living legend
among computer scientists." Her talk was entitled "Women and the Future
of Technology." [NOTE: Anita Borg died of brain cancer on April 6, 2003. She was 54.]
Wednesday, Nov. 17 - Cybergrrl
"Women in Cyberspace: Changing the Gender Landscape of
the Internet"
On Wednesday, November 17, Aliza Sherman, better known as "Cybergrrl,"
gave a talk entitled "Women in Cyberspace: Changing the Gender
Landscape of the Internet." Cybergrrl is the founder of the Femina
women-focused search engine, the Cybergrrl.com web site, and the WebGrrls
organization; she is also the author of the 1998 book A Woman's Guide to
the World Wide Web.
Thursday, March 30 - Ana Sisnett
"Who're You Callin' a 'Have-Not'?: Technology, Access,
and Training for Women"
Ana Sisnett is the Executive Director of the Austin Free-Net, a non-profit organization that offers free Internet access and classes in over forty sites in Austin, TX, many in neighborhoods with large African American and Latino populations. Co-founder of the TechnoMama project, an organization dedicated to training women, especially women of color, in information technology skills, Ana Sisnett has been active in online communities since the early 90s. Born in Panama and bilingual, she is also a performing poet and the author of a children's book and other works. She is on the cover of the March 2000 issue of Texas Monthly Biz and in an accompanying article. More information can be found in an earlier interview
Thursday, April 13 - Panel Discussion
"High Power, High Tech: Women IT Execs Talk Business"
Our panel of women executives have either founded or managed IT businesses in areas ranging from investment to technology training. We've asked these women to share their experiences as high power women in IT businesses and to discuss such questions as: How have their careers been shaped by their gender? What advice do they have for women considering careers in IT? How do they view the future of IT business and the impact women might have?
Our participants included Jane Brown,
Executive Director and Vice President of the Robert W.
Deutsch Foundation, who acted as moderator; Jeanne
Allert,
CEO of e.ssociation;
Michelle Benvenga,
Vice President of T.
Rowe Price Investment Technologies, Patricia
Bransford,
founder, National
Urban Technology Center and former senior marketing
executive at IBM, and Marsha Jews,
President and COO of Career
Communications Group, Inc.
For additional CWIT events, check our calendar.
 To
keep informed about the Center's activities, join our low-volume
e-mail list, cwit-announce.
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