Tech inclusion entrepreneurship with Ruthe Farmer
In this interview with Ruthe Farmer, we discuss Ruthe’s perspectives on feminism in education, Ruthe’s journey through tech inclusion entrepreneurship, finding ways outside of the classroom to have an impact on education, Ruthe’s work with the Last Mile Education Fund, and so much more.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either a
solo episode where i unpack some
scholarship in relation to computer
science education or an episode with a
guest or multiple guests in this week's
interview i'm speaking with ruth farmer
we discuss ruth's perspectives on
feminism and education ruth's journey
through tech inclusion entrepreneurship
finding ways outside of the classroom to
have an impact on education ruth's work
with the last mile education fund and so
much more as always you can find the
show notes by clicking the link in the
app that you're listening to this on or
by visiting jaredaler.com where you'll
find hundreds if not thousands of free
computer science education resources
along with some drumming and gaming
content because i'm a nerd and i create
content for a living and for fun you
also notice in the show notes that this
app is powered by boot up which is the
nonprofit that i work for where i create
and we also provide paid professional
development you can learn more at boot
up pd.org but with all that being said
we will now begin with an introduction
by ruth i'm ruth farmer i am
a tech inclusion entrepreneur
of sorts and currently the founder and
ceo of the last mile education fund so i
watched a lecture that you gave in 2018
and in it you said quote i'm not a
computer scientist and i'm not an
educator but i work in computer science
education end quote so what drew you to
the field of cs education i come at it
from both a feminist lens and a equity
lens in that this is one place where
women and underrepresented students or
minority students or marginalized
students whatever you want to call them
are not getting their fair share and it
is the one place where if they did get
that fair share would have the greatest
impact on socioeconomic mobility and so
i am interested in women making money
i'm interested in underrepresented
students making money i'm also
interested in the
contributions of these communities being
part of the technology that serves all
of us and so i think a lot about how to
scale things i'm a social entrepreneur
basically and so just because i wasn't a
computer scientist doesn't mean i can't
see the value and the importance of this
problem being solved when people hear
the terms feminist or equity lens
there's many different variants or
flavors of that that people think of i'm
curious if you could like unpack what
does feminist lens or equity lens mean
to you back in college i took a class
called rhetoric of women and i was a
sophomore in college at lewis and clark
college in portland oregon and i was
shocked that as a sophomore in college
that was the first time i was truly
learning who susan b anthony was and
what she really did or learning about
ida wells or surgeon or truth and so
many other women who had contributed
significantly to the you know creation
of our nation who had barely heard of
at all by the time i was a sophomore in
college and so i got thinking like how
are girls supposed to aspire if the role
models are not there for them so that's
what i mean is like it's about
representation it's about participation
but you know i know people kind of
sometimes put up their hackles when you
say i'm a feminist well the reality is
women are not a niche market women are
half of humanity and a hundred percent
of the mothers of humanity like this is
not a special group and our society
however has been designed as if the
default and the norm is men and men in
charge
mail-oriented products and services the
example i love to give is the cars 70 of
automotive purchases are made or
influenced by women but cars are made
for and marketed to men 100
there's not a single car on the market
that has a place to put your purse when
you have a passenger yet more than half
of people who drive cars are carrying
some kind of purse or bag right it's a
common user need it's totally ignored
and for whatever reason the car
companies and everyone have chosen to
ignore this fact and primarily market
cars to men and i find that interesting
that it's actually against their
interests to ignore this fact that women
control 70 of automotive purchases but
they continue to do it and it's because
we as a society default to
mail is the norm and the thing to aspire
to and the same goes for white and
that's just not a smart way to do
business or conduct society anymore and
to do a yes and with that i recently
read a paper that was saying that for
the crash test dummies and the
automotive engineers up until i think
it's like a decade or two ago
it was geared towards the body shape and
size and weight of the average male in
the us so they didn't even test on other
like smaller individuals taller
individuals etc right and it was
beheading and decapitating and breaking
the shoulders and collarbones of smaller
people
because the average person is most
people
right you know it's the average so
i really feel like we're missing out on
so much potential innovation when we're
defaulting to allowing a very small
percentage of the population so
primarily white and asian men to create
all the technology upon which we all
depend and
i mean you could argue that
the internet places like facebook and
twitter have become the sort of
airsoft's town square and where public
discourse is taking place if that
universe is built with only a male
perspective on it it's automatically
going to exclude other perspectives or
at least diminish them and they've done
lots of studies on this for example when
you look at imdb there's consistently
downgrading of movies that star women or
directed by women but if you look at who
does most of the
reviewing on imdb it's almost all men
and so
objectively are movies that star women
are directed by women bad movies or less
good movies no because the population of
people reviewing the movies is primarily
male that's interesting i'd like to read
a study of like well why is it that
males are more likely to review things
than other genders there have been some
studies on that but i think the primary
reason is like the structure of our
society tends to afford men the ability
to focus on a singular task and have
that free time like the man cave where
they have their workshop etc women tend
to have more diverse interests and
responsibilities and so you know not as
many women have either the time or the
inclination to sit and write movie
reviews all day and be like that their
thing
and if you look at all kinds of things
whether it's extreme sports or different
hobbies it tends to be that women have
lots of interests you know crafting and
other things that like they do a lot of
things whereas men tend to like
specialize in one thing and so you know
if you're trying to work plus raise the
kids plus take care of the house plus
also
conduct your family and social life you
don't have as much time for that sort of
focused interaction
yeah that's an interesting perspective
but women play more online games than
men people perceive gaming to be a male
place but actually if you look at games
like solitaire words with friends and
most of those kinds of games it's
actually more women yeah my wife
experiences that discrimination quite a
bit when she mentions she's a gamer like
even when i was in the classroom i'd be
like oh yeah my wife plays video games
too and i had a middle school kid come
up to me and be like yeah but is she any
good i'm just like yeah
why are you asking that you don't ask
that of me
right right yeah that is interesting
there is a whole thing in the gaming
world of young women who are into gaming
being questioned about their validity
are you legit are you a real geek girl
or a real gamer girl are you just here
to pick up guys and i'm like i don't
think anyone's going to gaming events to
pick up guys per se but
maybe someone is but there's a lot of
you know sort of geek culture that can
sort of challenge women to prove
themselves whether it's being a star
trek fan or being a gamer which is part
of exclusion right it's part of keeping
doors closed i'm curious when i was kind
of preparing for this interview
i noticed that one you have a lot of
really interesting job titles that
you've done but you also
have a wide-ranging career in like the
inclusion entrepreneur social
entrepreneur or in cs education i'm
wondering if you were to write a book
about your experiences
in cs education at large what would the
title of the chapters of that book be i
have actually been thinking about
writing a book so if anyone listening
wants to you know put me on a book
contract let me know well i think
there's sort of a historical chapter
that's you know kind of about how we got
here and i actually remember when we
were debating whether or not to call it
stem education or something else which
was like late 90s early 2000s and at the
time stem cell research was a super
controversial so nobody wanted to call
it stem and they were like mets etem
smet and i was like those are all
terrible
and
ultimately we didn't end up landing on
stem so i think there's a historical
chapter of like kind of how we got here
i think there's a chapter titled what i
know about girls i've had the luxury of
a front row seat to the lives of
thousands of aspiring technical young
women for a couple of almost two decades
now and i have just learned and seen so
much about
one how jazz they are about technology
like this perception that boys like
technology and girls don't that's
completely wrong
they are totally jazzed about it totally
into it they're so collaborative in such
powerful ways with the aspirations and
computing community to watch young women
like help each other write essays for a
scholarship they are all applying for or
to help each other apply for jobs that
they're all competing for it's this
cooperation and community sense and i
feel like it had to do with the fact
that there was so few
communities for technical young women to
connect and just be accepted that once
we had one they were like okay we're
gonna protect this community with
everything we have and it's really been
super inspiring to see the way they have
collaborated and supported each other
and now there's so many of them in the
workforce they're hiring they're
referring and hiring into their
companies
and i'm excited about that because i see
these communities of technical young
women who've been talking to each other
for 15 years sort of eating tech from
the inside out as they build teams and
networks and they're highly informed as
well i think there'd be a chapter on the
things we need to disrupt
like the fact that the systems of
education are not adapting fast enough
to the realities of our demographics
that we have more than half of students
in the united states on free lunch in
this country that should be alarming to
people and 53 of students in college
have a family income under 51 500 a year
that should be
alarming and yet the structures we built
for education
back when the 1800s when we sat down
were like we need to prepare young men
to go to harvard that was literally a
group of people that sat down and did
that we were designing education for the
sons of landed gentry right affluent
farmers we were an agrarian economy and
only men went to college and that's what
how we designed it those demographics
have dramatically changed and we need to
adapt to that and
root out all the places in the system
that assumes that assumes affluence
assumes a specific set of knowledge or
community
profile and then the other things i'd
write an entire chapter of like
red flags like we're moving so fast on
ai we're moving so fast that the
potential social harms of technology
are exponentially growing and if i could
just wave a magic wand i would make sure
that from day one that you are learning
computing like this should be like the
first thing you ever do is have the
whole class sit down and co-create
a code of ethics for technology because
ethics cannot be
a cherry on the sunday of your computer
science education any more than it
should be on your business school
education
or any other education like the ethics
of your work same goes for security we
might not have the cyber security
problems we have if we were building
with security in mind rather than being
like fast cheap and ugly let's build
this let's get it out there i'm like oh
it has holes now let's defend it
right and so the value we put into
secure code and writing secure code and
thinking about things like safety and
social impacts ahead of time i think
will go a long way and one of the
examples of this that i think is really
powerful is the new york times a few
years ago reported that with the rise of
iot that women were showing up in
domestic abuse shelters and relating how
they had been harassed and surveilled by
the iot devices in their homes that had
been typically installed by their
husband and controlled by their husband
so you can kick your abusive husband out
of the house but he still has control of
your thermostat your tv your
refrigerator like all the devices in
your home and had women been part of the
design process and have been people been
thinking about the potential harms and
social impacts of iot we may not have
had that outcome the social impacts and
the ethics of technology and the
security concerns are deeply intertwined
with the diversity of the workforce in
so many ways
because you can't imagine
threats that are not a threat to you
you've got to have everybody at the
table i'm curious one of the things that
i think is interesting is like what gets
public attention and what is not known
and the things that go on behind the
scenes whether it be a challenge or a
success with like an initiative that you
worked with i wonder if you could share
like a lesser-known challenge or success
like in the push for cs education in
schools or in something else that you've
been involved in that people might not
be aware of so one of our little hidden
successes in my time at the white house
was that the education system in the
united states is local right it's local
to schools districts states etc so even
if president obama's like everyone teach
computer science it doesn't mean that's
going to happen right but there's
leverage you can pull and the department
of education is one place because
there's a lot of money as well as policy
that flows out of the department of ed
one of the problems we came across was
that states and the sort of bureaucratic
machines in the states hadn't because
computer science didn't count towards
graduation in most states back then in
like 2012 it was only like 10 states
where it counted right so it was growing
but it wasn't broadly part of the core
curriculum and so states would not
interpret
stem to include computer science and
even though science technology
engineering and math clearly like
computer science is in there in the
technology and the engineering and the
math but because it wasn't like
explicitly spelled out they were
misinterpreting it one way that that
bore out was that there was a provision
that teachers
can get up to
if they are a highly qualified math or
science teacher you get 5 000 if you're
just a regular teacher but it's 17 500
it's a pretty significant over three
times as much money but states were not
interpreting computer science teachers
to be highly qualified math and science
teachers which was actually creating a
disincentive to get certified in cs
right so teachers reached out to me
about that and i talked with the
department of education and ultimately
what happened besides sending out some
dear colleague letters to the states to
clarify but they literally went through
everything
in the department of ed anywhere it said
stem
including computer science
[Laughter]
did a like you know find and replace
basically
and put in including computer science
just to clarify because you know people
do what they know they're like okay for
years we've been doing this for 40 years
we've been this is math and science this
is what it is and so you have to make it
easy for them to change there shouldn't
be any ambiguity about whether or not
computer science qualifies just say so
that was like sort of a hidden lever
that you can pull that actually has
broad permanent impact but isn't
something you would think was going to
be you know newsworthy yeah it's amazing
the impact that
changes in wording can have from my
dissertation looked at discourse across
a discussion forum so i'm really into
the micro and the macro discourse and
because i'm like have my feet in two
fields in terms of music education and
computer science education it's been
interesting to look at how the discourse
in the fields kind of compare and
contrast especially when it comes to
advocacy one of the things that i notice
from both fields is that there's a
tendency to advocate in ways that can
come across as colonizing whether it's
axiologies or ontologies so ways of
valuing our ways of being i'm wondering
if you have any advice for people who
are interested in advocating for cs
education but how might they be able to
do that in ways that don't colonize
others well i highly highly highly
recommend it's from cs for all
and it's called
ycs but i think they rebranded it it's
part of their script program but it's
this exercise you go through to really
understand like why are we teaching this
why are we advocating for it how does it
fit in yep the visions framework right
yeah the visions right cs visions
visions for cs from rafi santo so great
because one that helps whoever's wanting
to be the advocate build you know
relationships and constituency and get
teams together but also it's authentic
because it's looking at like the values
in your community i think the other
thing is
that's been a failure in advocating for
cs is there's advocating for cs to
policy makers and industry which is
really about getting money and they're
like 500 000 jobs there's 500 000 jobs
which is true but does a middle school
or an elementary school principal care
about filling jobs in silicon valley
they have other cares which is why
visions is so important and valuable it
was a bit of a wake-up call i think it
was in 2017 or 2018 when ed week did a
study and they asked all these
principals of different schools about
what they cared about and jobs was
pretty low and so i think
know your audience and
understand you know one of my
proudest achievements
is the passing of the promotes act of
defense department funding for
computer science cyber security
engineering etc education for junior
rotc and one of the ways that i got both
republicans and democrats on board with
that was one i mean the jrotc is the
largest federally funded youth program
that exists it's also the oldest they
have more than 500 000 kids and those
kids are more than half on free or
reduced lunch and more than half
non-white and 40 girls which i found
surprising big population of students
and the dod is already investing
hundreds of millions of dollars in this
program yet something like 30 of their
high schools were teaching computer
science so kids who had already put on a
uniform the most likely kids who would
join public service such as national
defense did not even have the
opportunity to prepare for what we could
argue would be 90 of the defense
workforce is going to be technical right
in the future right
and so you know when i spoke to
republicans about this i was like look
we have national defense needs clearly
and here's a population that can do that
with the democrats i'm like we have
education needs and here's a potential
way to get money to do that and
ultimately that legislation authorized
the dod to pay for preparation of cs
educators in jrotc high schools which is
more importantly you know it doesn't
matter who's president the defense
department has money they're like the
one place in the government that has
money and so
one little known fact is most breast
cancer funding is coming out of the
department of defense because you can
argue women are in the military it's a
healthcare issue for women hence breast
cancer research should be done
because it benefits
you know the military employees and so
there's no way you can argue that it is
a bad idea for jrotc cadets to be
prepared in computing like it is a good
idea in fact it's an urgent idea and so
now that legislation passed in 2020 i
think they appropriated 13 million into
the budget for it in 2021 and then i'm
not sure they've actually passed the
million dollar ask in there and
as that scales up we're reaching
not only a population of students who
had not been reached but also the
schools that served them which you know
has a halo effect of about 6 million
kids it's a really interesting way of
having an impact in education without
like being in the classroom i'm
wondering what you would recommend for
educators who wanted to get more
involved with educational policy i came
to the white house with almost no policy
experience or like not what i would have
called policy and it was always sort of
an amorphous word to me i was like what
do you mean what does policy mean but i
really learned that policy making is
packaging up your good ideas and giving
them to people who can take credit for
them and have the power to implement
them the key thing with advocating for
policy change is you have to come to the
table with a solution you can't show up
in a legislator's office and be like
this is bad it has to be fixed but if
you show up in the legislator's office
and say if we change this language
in the national defense act it will
enable 500 000 kids to get access to
computer science education they're like
oh okay i can do that the other thing to
remember is policy makers you know
they're judged on you got to look at the
incentives right what are the incentives
in the system well members of
government legislature local whatever
they're judged on how much legislation
they get passed so you need to give them
something they can pass and so it has to
be a very clear like x plus y equals z
it needs to be clear and it needs to be
actionable if i were a k-12 teacher i
would absolutely go be an einstein
fellow the einstein fellowship puts you
in congress or in government and it's a
one-year fellowship it's paid
and highly recommend that as many
teachers as possible go spend some time
in congress or working in the government
to participate in that process i also
think there's lots and lots of work to
be done at the state level you know it's
one thing for a governor to be like cs
is awesome and for a principal or a
superintendent to be like i want to
teach cs there's a whole lot of stuff
between those two layers
that is bureaucratic junk
that is old and outdated and needs to be
tweaked and so the first thing you want
to do is like follow the money trail
what are the incentives in the system
the incentives are usually money so like
how is the money moving
who is moving the money and how can
you move some of that money towards your
cause because ultimately that's where it
all comes down to and then what are the
other incentives in the system you know
if i remember early early on
we were all like we need schools to
teach computer science and
we have to become friends with the math
people and early on you might remember
when we start saying math computer
science should count as a math that
there was a lot of resistance from the
math community because they saw that as
potentially having students take less
math and i think they're of the mind
that students already don't take enough
math so
that you know put computer science at
war with math and i was like this is
dangerous because
not only are there tons and tons of
incentives in the system for math right
math is what schools are judged on math
scores are important
but also the footprint of principals and
superintendents who used to be computer
science teachers is probably close to
zero whereas the footprint of
administrators who used to be math
teachers is probably pretty high and so
one of the i think critical inflection
points was
getting the math in ctm and the math
community to be part of the solution for
computer science education and i have to
say i will give most of that credit to
emmanuel chancellor from bootstrap
because he was straddling both worlds
and really took the time to build the
relationships with the math community
and bring them along is an interesting
challenge or barrier to work through i'm
wondering what would you consider to be
like a current structural barrier that's
like negatively impacting equity and
inclusion in cs education i think the
primary
problem we need to fix immediately
is the pre-service teacher education
system so we are pumping out new
teachers every year and most of those
teachers are coming out of school with
no preparation in computer science at
all even though states have standards in
computer science now they have to be
retrained and you know that the training
they get in their teacher prep program
is going to be far more in-depth and
sustained than say a weekend of pd
in cs and so
fixing that
as well as creating the pipeline of
phds of computer science education that
actually exist in teachers colleges
which is a very very small number in the
us right now so last year we launched cs
for ed which
initially funded four or five million
dollar endowments at
colleges of education that primarily
prepare teachers of color and so
you know let's do an end run here
because when the funding comes from the
feds to do this the big schools are
going to get it the big powerful schools
that have the money to go after big
federal grants so our strategy was let's
fund four schools that primarily serve
teachers of color and
give them a running start and building
the model and so i'm really proud of
this and one of the first investments we
landed was for ut el paso which produces
you know like 1200 hispanic teachers now
imagine if the primary population of new
teachers graduating into the workforce
in texas with computing like as a
foundational part of their education are
all hispanic like that's a sea change
for the state of texas so i think that
you know we had a carton horse problem
because until computer science was in
demand like part of the standards and
part of the expected curriculum there
was no way that colleges of education
were gonna focus on it because you're
not gonna prepare teachers for something
they can't even get licensed to do or
find a job in you know we've got this
heart and horse problem now we're got an
education system that has not caught up
with what's being asked for in the
school system but there's a solution for
that which is we fund not only
pre-service centers of excellence in
computer science but the incubation of
graduate students to populate all the
colleges of education with faculty of
computer science education yeah it's an
interesting challenge to work through
i'm wondering if you could expand upon
what is the last mile education and how
does it use an abundance approach to
kind of address some other barriers in
cs education or cs in general yeah this
is my favorite thing to talk about these
days
you know like i said i've had a front
row seat to the lives of thousands of
students for the last 15 years through
the various programs that i've been
working on and creating and i kept
seeing really promising students stumble
towards the end of their education and
you know the inspiration for this fund
was a particular student named ryan had
had a really
not great k-12
experience because of family issues but
nonetheless was really committed to a
career in technology managed to get her
into mississippi state she was doing
well and then her junior year she had an
internship confirmed at a big bank and
she nearly cancelled it because she
couldn't afford the bus ticket from
mississippi to north carolina or a place
to live until she could start that
internship and get paid and you know
that was maybe a two thousand dollar
intervention to solve that for her and
today she's making six figures and
working at the bank and she's the
co-founder of the last mile education
fund along with me and her professor
sarah lee for someone to falter after
they've made it that far is just such a
waste and you know we have an entire
movement to push young people
into the pipeline for computing but on
average 11 of students in the bottom
income quartile will graduate college
within six years of starting so
that says to me the the problem is money
because like 90 of the kids in the top
income quartile are graduating within
six years so what we're doing is solving
the graduation gap for low-income
students in computer science and
engineering by basically acting like
their parents we take care of small
expenses that come up we have emergency
funding we have bridge funding if
something catastrophic happens like the
transmission falls out of your car or
you want to go to an internship but
can't put up the 2 000
and what's one of the things that really
frustrates me is like even paid
opportunities are not accessible to
low-income students also
so much of our universe around tech
hiring is misinterpreting
privilege for potential what i mean by
that is you know if what you're looking
for in hiring is like what college did
you go to pretty much what college you
went to is a function of the zip code
you were born into and the affluence of
your family for the most part what
college did you go to you know how great
is your gpa how many hackathons have you
won
well your ability to go to and win
hackathons has a lot more to do with
your ability to not have to have a job
than your actual interest and ability
and so
i'm arguing for us to invest in the last
mile for what i call striving low income
student if a student has made it to
their junior year in computer science i
don't care what their gpa is we need
them to finish because if they don't
finish
we all lose they lose industry loses
they can't pay their student debt they
never live up to their potential it's
just a lose all around but if they
graduate industry gets
the person that the talent they need
they make on average 43 475
more than they would have earned in a
job with some college but no degree and
they pay taxes at a higher rate for the
rest of their lives so we all benefit
right they buy a home
all the economic activity that goes
along with a well-employed individual so
it's such a win-win when we invest in
students at that level but the
scholarship system of the us is all
about identifying super people and
recognizing them for how super they are
rather than going you know maybe these
students would be a student if they had
secure housing reliable transportation
food a state-of-the-art device so my
argument is instead of rewarding talent
that has demonstrated prior success
let's invest in talent based on their
potential and so we have invested close
to 1.2 million dollars in the last two
years in
have been 41
african-american 24 latinx all within
the last two years of a degree in
computer science and we have 196
students that will have graduated by
june of this year so the roi is also
really fast right so you could put the
same thousand dollar investment in to
somebody going to a summer camp in high
school and maybe you'll get
a tech graduate in six to 12 years or
you could put in a thousand dollars in
the last two years of college and you
get a graduate in six to 12 months and
the reason we say abundance is that we
just believe in them you know people ask
me like how do you know that they really
deserve the money and how do you i'm
like because they're a junior in
computer science like literally i need
them to graduate i believe in them
they've proven themselves if you've made
it that far you're not going to change
your major at that point right you're
like almost to the end
so typically if people ask for help they
need it and we should just give it to
them so we take an abundance viewpoint
to who qualifies we also take an
abundance viewpoint to what qualifies
and we don't ask students to perform
their poverty they don't have to sing a
big sob story we also
don't vet them against each other we
look at each student individually assess
their situation and say yes or no so our
acceptance rate is about 58
and
most of the students we've declined it's
just because they simply weren't
eligible in some way
whether it was their major or some other
factor my goal ultimately is to raise
enough money to support you know any
low-income student in tech or
engineering because the bottom line is
all
low-income students are
under-represented in tech because
otherwise they wouldn't be low-income
and so
getting this challenge over the finish
line is the fastest thing we can do
and i also think you know it does
correlate with diversity that there's
much higher populations of black and
latinx students in low-income
socioeconomic status communities so
there's that factor as well so i'm super
excited about it i'm also excited about
all the things we can learn because like
i said at the beginning the system has
been set up for affluent sums of
landed gentry right and it's not set up
to support low-income students being
successful right i'm curious does this
also include cs education majors or just
cs majors you know i think i would
actually consider that and i need to
like find the right funding partner for
that because the idea of funding cs
teachers through this fund i think is a
win-win on both sides of the equation so
i just need to find the right source of
dollars for that yeah because like when
i was a university supervisor i know of
at least one student who did not have a
house while they were doing their
student teaching and so they were going
an entire semester they were not allowed
to work a job outside of their job they
had to sign a contract saying that and
they weren't getting paid to do that
internship basically and i know how hard
it is for a lot of education majors to
do that so well one of the things we're
doing this summer that's along those
lines is so we have this theory that
research pathways are kind of reserved
for affluent students because an reu a
research experience for undergrads is
capped at 7 500 for the summer which if
you're going to san francisco or seattle
that's barely cost of living and so we
have a partnership with the moore
foundation which cares a lot about
science discovery so this summer we're
going to fund five fellowships for
research experiences that will give an
additional ten thousand dollars
to students who are doing reu's in
computing the goal is to test the
hypothesis that if we lower the relative
cost because if you're a low-income
student you may be interested in a
research pathway but how could you turn
down an internship that's amazon that's
going to pay you 24 000 for the summer
to take a 7 500 stipend and so
that contributes to the fact that you
know we have very few underrepresented
low-income students going into getting
masters and phds and into the research
pathways and academia similarly i think
the teaching pathway could have a
similar solution i'm curious with your
careers like working in a lot of high
profile positions and whatnot i imagine
there are many demands placed on you how
did you take care of yourself and try
and prevent the burnout that can come
with just being overwhelmed with too
many things to do it's really hard i
mean the burnout is real
one thing though is i just get so much
energy from
seeing the successes of the students and
seeing the notes come back to us and you
know we recently helped one of our
grantees we had given her a grant to
help her finish college she graduated
and we helped her negotiate her first
job offer because low-income students
can't turn to their parent or their
family member and say like is this a
good offer at microsoft or amazon and so
we helped the student negotiate her
starting salary from 75 000 to 104 000
nice she's going to make roughly 400 000
more over the next decade than she would
have and it's like life-changing for her
to start at that level and
it positions her as having a high value
because if you get paid less in your
first job than your peers you're
perceived to be worthless because you
cost less and so negotiating that first
job is one of the most important things
you can do and how you launch into the
field so those types of wins you know
are happening pretty frequently for us
these days so our model is we're going
to invest in these students they're
going to graduate and they're going to
get great jobs and they're going to come
back as a volunteer and ultimately as an
investor later we had our first student
come back to reinvest in the fund 10
months after we started we funded her in
february of 2020 she graduated in june
she came back and invested in august and
continues
to support us and so it's like this
virtuous circle we call it you know
investment engagement reinvestment that
is going to power this long term and
yeah i'm really excited about that piece
of the model because we have these
alumni relationships with the students
so we find out like where are you
working and we congratulate them when
they graduate and they come back and
support other students like them yeah i
love that i'm wondering if you could
share a message like a call to action to
the
cs education community or to the field
at large what would that message be
take credit i think
one of the things we have not done well
is take credit for how much good in the
world can be done through technology as
a sector you know people think oh well i
want to be a do-gooder i need to be a
doctor or a lawyer the reality is the
amount of good that can be done with
technology and has been done with
technology is so huge and so i want that
message to make its way to the kids
through the educators and for that we
all need to take credit and also just
thank you i mean i know it is not
easy to be the flag-waving cs educator
in a school district that doesn't
understand you or the goals and so you
know thank you for waving that flag but
also you know come out and get help
because the whole community is here
diasporal has this fantastic slack cs
for all teachers has an awesome
community csta has an awesome community
don't do this by yourself like there is
a community out there i gave a keynote
to csta
south dakota earlier this week and you
know they're everywhere amazing teachers
who like care deeply who are taking on a
discipline that may not have been their
home discipline and working very hard on
it and that's just such a huge feat and
we really really appreciate it like that
are there any questions that i haven't
asked that you'd like to discuss well i
think the one thing that i'd like to
always impart on people is one of the
easiest things you can do and the
cheapest things you can do is
recognition recognition works and part
of the reason
and the design behind aspirations and
computing was that girls were not being
recognized and affirmed as being
technical by society by the media by
school etc so we created the award for
aspirations and computing to be like oh
you're interested in technology awesome
we need you you are awesome industry
needs you keep going right so
it takes so little
time and effort to encourage and
recognize a student for doing something
right or an administrator for doing
something right and
it works it absolutely works so if
you're finding you are hitting some
roadblocks find that one person in the
administration who is moving in the
right direction and just publicly shower
them with praise because they will move
further and then others will follow them
i like that where can people go to
connect with you and the organizations
that you work with so i am online as
roof f r u t h e f on twitter
we are last mile dash ed.org last mile
education fund you can also just google
roof on the word girl and you will find
me i'm all over the internet apparently
i've had to start like being careful
about what i wear because i'm on the
internet so much that i look like i'm
wearing the same outfit all the time so
i need to like change it up you know
follow us also you know follow cs4all
and be in that community it's a great
place to be lots of great
leadership and content there and if you
are a teacher of high school aspirations
and computing aspirations.org for
all the girls in your classes and with
that that concludes this week's episode
of the csk8 podcast i hope you enjoyed
this conversation with ruth and i hope
you consider sharing with a friend who
might also enjoy this conversation stay
tuned next week for another episode and
until then i hope you're all staying
safe and are having a wonderful week
Guest Bio
Ruthe Farmer
Advocate for Diversity and Inclusion in Technology, Engineering and STEM
Ruthe Farmer is a talent entrepreneur laser-focused on inclusion and leveraging existing infrastructures to scale change. She is the founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund and previously was chief evangelist at CSforALL. Focusing her efforts on systems-level change for tech inclusion since 2001, she served as senior policy advisor for tech inclusion at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy where she led implementation of President Obama’s call to action for Computer Science for All (CSforAll) U.S. students and advised on national tech inclusion policy. While at the White House, Farmer launched the Summit on Computer Science for All and persuaded more than 500 community partners to make public commitments to advance and support computer science for students.
Prior to joining the White House, Farmer served as chief strategy and growth officer at the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and director of the NCWIT K-12 Alliance. For eight years at NCWIT, she led strategy and development of national initiatives to increase the participation of women and girls in computing and IT fields. She launched and scaled the successful Aspirations in Computing talent development initiative for young women in computing, expanding the program nationally in just three years. Aspirations in Computing is now available to all girls and young women in the U.S. and territories. It includes the AspireIT near-peer outreach program for K-12 girls, the Award for Aspirations in Computing for technically inclined high school young women, the NCWIT Collegiate Award recognizing the technical contributions of college women, and a national Aspirations in Computing community of program alumnae.
Farmer created the TECHNOLOchicas campaign for Latinas, a bilingual media campaign produced in partnership with the Televisa Foundation and distributed by Univision. She also helped expand the NCWIT Student Seed Fund and leadership of the NCWIT K-12 Alliance, which reaches 100% of U.S. girls through its broad network of partners.
She served as the 2012 chair of Computer Science Education Week and was named a White House Champion of Change for Technology Inclusion in 2013. She received the Anita Borg Institute Award for Social Impact in 2014 and the Education UK Alumni Award for Social Impact in 2015.
Well known as an advocate for equity and inclusion in technology, Farmer has been invited to speak at the United Nations, the European Parliament, the White House, the Washington Post, TEDxBeaconStreet, Oxford University, the Federal Reserve, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and many universities and colleges. She has been an advisor to PBS SciGirls Latina and SciGirls Code, RoadTrip Nation, the Girls Choice Awards, and has served on the high-level advisory board of the European Centre for Women in Technology. She currently serves in an advisory capacity for Girls Computing League, Project CS Girls, Reinvented Magazine, E4USA, the Day One Project, and Schmidt Futures.
Farmer has been a guest contributor to TechCrunch and the Shriver Report, and has been featured in Forbes, The Financial Times, TechRepublic and EdScoop. She holds a BA in Communications and German from Lewis & Clark College and an MBA focused on Social Entrepreneurship and Marketing from the University of Oxford Said Business School. She is passionate about integrating innovative business strategies into social change efforts.
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