Abstract: It is common knowledge that women remain underrepresented in STEM fields in the U.S. For instance, women earned only 18% of Computer Science degrees in 2015. As educators, what can we do to change this? In this talk, I will discuss social processes that cause women to turn away from STEM fields, as well as interventions that have been found to negate these social processes and boost the persistence of women STEM fields. I will also present preliminary results from a field experiment that was conducted in a Computer Science course at NC State, which was designed to increase the likelihood that women pursue technical degrees.

Short Bio: Susan Fisk is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Kent State University. Her research focuses on understanding how gendered processes influence decision making, with special focus on how organizational practices can trigger or dampen these gender differences in behavior. Her research has been covered in The Huffington Post, The Telegraph, Science Daily, and Women’s Health Magazine (among others). She received her PhD in Sociology from Stanford in 2015, where she was a Graduate Dissertation Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She has also interned on the People Analytics team at Google and worked as a strategy consultant.

*A lunch will be served at 11:30 prior to the talk. Lunch requires an RSVP by April 9, 2018: http://go.ncsu.edu/susan_fisk