Greetings, I've discussed this with a few of you briefly previously, but I've let time run short, and need to get things settled quickly. In brief, we are looking for the support of LinuxChix and/or Debian-Women as we put together a funded program to attract and support women computer scientists through open source. Please excuse the length of the rest of this message, but I want to be clear as to our plans and goals.
I'm Bart Massey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. I'm an open source developer (http://xcb.freedesktop.org, http://nickle.org, http://summer.cs.pdx.edu, and other projects) and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University (e.g. http://wiki.cs.pdx.edu/ossclass) in Portland, Oregon USA. KernelChix leader Kristen Carlsen-Accardi here in Portland will vouch for me, if that helps establish my bona fides :-). My Dept. Head, Dr. Cynthia Brown, and I are currently working on an US National Science Foundation proposal we think you might be interested in. The NSF is looking to attract underrepresented groups into college computer science. Specifically, we're currently targeting NSF Solicitation 05-562 on "Broadening Participation in Computing" http://nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13510&org=CISE&from=home (although if that falls through, there are other similar venues for this sort of work.) We deplore the fact that women are so highly underrepresented in our field. To address this issue, we propose that involvement in open source may be one way to attract women into computing that can lead to their involvement in a college computer science curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We have formed a coalition of partners in Oregon and Washington USA including IBM, Clark College, Lane Community College, and others with the goal of putting together an open-source based academic computer science "track" that would offer support and mentorship for women as they progress from technical "outsiders" to advanced open source developers and computer scientists. Our proposal is more than just local. It includes funding for a portal site dedicated to helping women in open source into and through academia. We think that this can be effective in supporting and encourage women in computer science academia internationally. That is where you folks come in. We're going to need the kind of volunteer mentoring and tutoring of women in open source and related technologies that you are already providing. In return, we can provide various kinds of financial support, help with advertising and promotion, and offer solid, caring mentoring and advising about academic issues from an open source perspective. In short, we'd like women-in-open-source partners with experience and dedication. We think your organizations are the best fit for our needs. I understand that your organizations have specific open source focii---we are comfortable working within that space, and hopefully we can provide a broader context for your efforts. What we'd like to get from you, preferably in the next few days (the proposal deadline is June 14), is an organization leader's signature on a memorandum of understanding that would show your support for this proposal as we apply to the NSF for funding. I'd be happy to draft this memorandum with your guidance, or you may prefer to draft it yourselves. I'll be quite interested to hear your thoughts on this. Please let me know if there's any way I can help to clarify the proposal or address concerns. And thank you very much for your time and attention. Sincerely, Bart Massey [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
