Senior ) major, student, and aspiring software engineer Kelly Glebus was surprised by how few women were among her peers. Once Glebus reached higher-level CS classes, she says it wasn鈥檛 uncommon for her to be one of four or five women in a class of 30 to 40 students.
When she was a junior in high school, she enrolled in a pre-AP computer programming class as an elective. While the class wasn鈥檛 her first choice, she quickly developed an interest in programming and learned that she was adept at problem-solving.
鈥淥n the first day and my teacher got out these huge pieces of butcher paper and had us create these 鈥渢hread鈥 conversations on them,鈥 says Glebus. 鈥淲e were answering questions like 鈥榃hat jobs are we going to lose to computer automation?鈥, 鈥榃hat are ways that computers make our lives easier,鈥 and things like that. I thought that it was a very interesting way to begin a class, so I stayed in it.鈥
Her interest in programming did not go unnoticed by her teacher. Glebus says 鈥渉e encouraged me to continue (and gave me all the extra work I asked for), and I decided that I was going to college for computer science. He really changed my life, and I鈥檓 very grateful for him. We鈥檙e still in touch today!鈥
Since then, Glebus has developed into a young professional. She interned at as a junior software developer, where she worked with Angular and Python to do full-stack web app development. She is currently a cybersecurity intern at doing user interface design amongst other projects.听
Some more notable achievements Glebus is proud of was being 鈥渁 part of the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates held at 亚洲AV in 2018, where I did some research with wearable technologies. I鈥檓 also currently a class facilitator for CS395: Student-Initiated Class Introduction into the Internet of Things.鈥
Given her passion for the field, Glebus encourages other women to try computing. She praised 亚洲AV's Department of Computer Science for being inclusive towards all students.
鈥淚 think a lot of super qualified women feel intimidated either by the subject or even by the male-dominated environment,鈥 says Glebus. 鈥淟ike I said before, computer science is hard, there are classes that you couldn鈥檛 pay me to retake, but that doesn鈥檛 mean it鈥檚 impossible. I wish more women would take the leap and try it; I think they鈥檇 find that they鈥檙e really good at it. Like I did.鈥
On March 3, Mason announced a new initiative, Break Through Tech, that aims to propel more students who identify as women and non-binary into tech education鈥攁nd ultimately tech careers鈥攖hrough curriculum innovation, career access, and community building. The goal of the grant is to increase the number of these students graduating with a tech degree at Mason by 12.5 percent by 2026.
For more information about Break Through Tech at Mason, visit .听