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They Inspire Women to Code and Teach Lifelong Learning Skills
April 8, 2021
When Laney Strange began her career in computer science as an undergraduate student at Simmons College, a women’s college, she almost forgot she was entering into a male-dominated field. Laney Strange, associate teaching professor in Khoury College, was recently honored with the University Excellence in Teaching Award.
“My first four years of computer science were collaborative and not competitive,” says Strange, an associate teaching professor of computer science at Northeastern. “I never felt excluded.”
But classes full of female coders are anomalies, even with so many initiatives to include more women in computer science. After moving on to graduate school, Strange was often the only woman in the classroom.
“It’s intimidating to be the only one,” she says. “And then you hear the comments that every underrepresented person has heard: ‘You must be here to fill some diversity quota.’”