Hug, S., & Jurow, A. S. (2013). Learning together or going it alone: how community contexts shape the identity development of minority women in computing. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 19(4).

Educational programs are dynamic and context dependent; their impact should thus be analyzed to illuminate their locally situated elements of success. The purpose of projects like Women in Academic Computing (WiAC) is to perfect small initiatives that can be scaled up to serve additional communities of scholars. However, before attempting to scale up it is necessary to pay attention to the nuances of local instantiations of WiC because these shape the kinds of identity and career trajectories that open up for undergraduates pursuing careers in computing. This paper details how the local instantiations of two WiAC communities, located in different institutions and enacted with different forms of leadership around how to include minority women in the field of computing, contributed to students’ trajectories toward becoming computer scientists. The results indicate that ideas about multiple, successful inbound trajectories exist for academic computing. Each of these trajectories has promise for leading to inclusiveness in computing and should be investigated across communities striving to increase the numbers of women in the field.