Oops.

I got myself involved in a grant proposal today. Bart’s trying to get an NSF grant titled “Broadening Participation in Computing”, which has the goal of getting under-represented groups involved in engineering disciplines and especially computer science. This would be my fourth grant that I’m helping Bart with simultaneously right now; another is the Software-Defined Radio grant that I’m trying to find anybody and everybody who might be interested in helping with. (It might be best if they’re PSU students, or at least lived in Portland. But if you, fellow internet traveler, want to play– well, it doesn’t hurt to ask.)

Sounds like the plan that he and Cindy have cooked up would help just about anybody get involved in CS, but in order to start with something manageable they’re just talking about getting women to participate.

The model Bart is looking at is the LinuxChix; related groups are KDE Women and Debian Women. (There’s a list of a bunch of science and technology mailing lists for women, which has more stuff listed than I would have expected.) Of further relevance is at the Linux Documentation Project: HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux.

In another few minutes, I’ll be heading off to the last session of the grant-writing class that my mom and I started three weeks ago. (Our teacher granted me permission to repost her slides.) Bart says I should tell them that I’m working on a grant with a professional grant-writer (the consultant I guess they’ve hired), the chair of my department (Cindy), and a tenure-track faculty member (Bart); and that we haven’t yet decided whether to go for the $200k or the $2M grant. (In class we’ve mostly been talking about grants up to maybe $100k.) He says they won’t believe me. I think the claim is too unwieldy to state, and they’ll get bored before I finish.