Community colleges sending too many into remedial math

By Eloy Ortiz Oakley and Pamela Burdman

May 29, 2015





California’s 112 community colleges are designed to provide high school graduates who don’t go to four-year universities a second chance at higher education. But when it comes to math proficiency requirements, too many community college students are getting a raw deal, beginning with the way colleges test incoming students’ math skills and send the vast majority of students to remedial math courses.

In California, about 85 percent of students at community colleges must take remedial math courses. The typical reaction to this troubling scenario is to fault students’ high school preparation. By design, community colleges are open to all comers, so it’s not surprising that some students aren’t proficient in math.

But placing the blame on students and high schools ignores colleges’ part of the equation: The diagnostic tools most community colleges use have been found to be inaccurate, “under-placing” a large number of students in remedial courses that they don’t need for college success. And according to national research, community colleges set a higher bar than even four-year universities: Community college students are about 20 percent more likely to require remedial courses than similarly qualified students at four-year schools.

Research study after research study has shown that students’ high school records more accurately predict how they will do in college, but most community colleges continue to rely solely or primarily on placement tests to decide whether students can enroll in college-level math courses. These practices, in effect, levy a penalty on community college students and undermine the vision the colleges were created to fulfill.

California led the nation in making higher education open to all by growing a system of two-year colleges, and the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education became a national model.

Completion of high school Algebra 2 classes is the typical standard for college readiness in math. As college math requirements shift, there has been experimentation with alternatives that emphasize different math content, such as statistics, which is more relevant for many fields. But even measured against the existing standard, too many students are being treated unfairly.

Each year, nearly 50,000 students who have passed Algebra 2 in high school with a C or better are required to repeat the equivalent course — and some times several remedial math courses — when they enroll at community colleges, according to estimates prepared by the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges.

If those same students were admitted to a UC campus, they could walk into most college-level math courses without being tested. But at community colleges, they are assigned to remedial sequences. Though intended to prepare students for college-level math, the sequences have been shown to hinder more students from completing college than they help.

Fortunately, the misuse of test scores has begun to change, and California is once again in the lead, as highlighted in a new series of reports by Oakland-based Learning Works and Stanford-based Policy Analysis for California Education.

Long Beach City College is at the forefront of this work. Heeding the research evidence, LBCC pioneered a new formula that applies greater weight to students’ high school course-taking. The result? LBCC quadrupled the proportion of entering students allowed to take college-level math courses. And those students did just as well in math as prior groups of students who were screened based on test scores alone.

Imagine the change if every college in California used such a formula: The proportion of students required to take remedial math courses would be markedly reduced, those assigned to remedial courses would need fewer of them, and more students would have a fair shake at earning a college degree.

The community college system is putting its weight behind this approach. First of all, next year, it will roll out a new test for all colleges to use. Even more importantly, a team of researchers with the RP Group and Cal-PASS Plus, a statewide data system, are developing a formula similar to LBCC’s for use by all 112 colleges. Because our colleges are locally governed, though, use of the approach will be voluntary.

It would be a mistake for any college not to join the effort to give students credit for their high school course-taking. All California community colleges should follow Long Beach’s lead and use a formula that more accurately reflects students’ abilities and potential. State education agencies and high schools also need to do their part to make high school transcripts available to colleges.

There’s more we can do to open up opportunities for all students in California to succeed, but this simple change will bring California one step closer to achieving its vision of true access to a college education.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley is the superintendent-president of Long Beach City College and a UC regent. Pamela Burdman of Berkeley is author of “Degrees of Freedom: Probing Placement Policies at California Colleges and Universities.” 

See Your Company Through the Eyes of a Hacker

• by Nathaniel C. Fick

MARCH 24, 2015

Harvard Business review

JP Morgan Chase. Target. Sony. Each has been part of the growing number of cyber-attacks against private companies around the world in recent years. In the latter two cases, CEOs were forced to resign in the wake of the breach. Attacks are growing more sophisticated and more damaging, targeting what companies value the most: their customer data, their intellectual property, and their reputations.

What these attacks – together with breaches to defense, law-enforcement, and military-contractor networks – reveal is that our cyber-security efforts over the last two decades have largely failed, and fixing this will require the attention not only of security officers and IT teams, but also of boards and CEOs.

Companies need to take a new approach. They can do so by looking at themselves through the eyes of their attackers. In the military this is called turning the map around. The point is to get inside the mind of the enemy, and to see the situation as they do, in order to anticipate and prepare for what’s to come.

Unfortunately, this mindset is still too rare. Despite spending billions of dollars every year on the latest security products and hiring the best security engineers and analysts, companies are more vulnerable than they’ve ever been. Two trends account for this: the rapid convergence of enterprise IT architectures, and the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated adversaries.

Changes in enterprise IT over the past decade mean that every company is now a technology company. By the end of the decade, there will be 50 billion devices connected to the Internet, complicating networks and generating petabytes of data. To add to that, the cloud revolution has finally dissolved perimeters – companies enjoying the benefits of infrastructure as a service must depend upon the security of networks and systems beyond their direct control.

As mobility, the Internet of Things, and the cloud change enterprises, adversaries are also becoming more sophisticated. States and state-sponsored entities spy on and attack private companies, often using military-grade tactics and capabilities. They do this within a system where offense enjoys a structural advantage over defense because attribution is difficult, deterrence is uncertain, and attackers need to succeed only once, but defenders must succeed always.

Most companies try to deal with this chaos by parsing signal from noise. They build walled castles around their most precious assets, but perimeters don’t matter when even the average college student owns seven IP-enabled devices. They rely on automated alerts to tell them when something malicious on their networks matches some previous bad event, but this approach overwhelms them with red flags while remaining blind to new and previously unknown threats.

There’s just too much noise to contend with. Security analysts, for example, may see a thousand incidents in a given day, but only have the time and resources to investigate a fraction of them. This is why hackers were able to exfiltrate over 40 million credit-card numbers from Target, despite the fact that a peripheral network device had detected the malware. It’s also the reason why Neiman Marcus was hacked after its system generated over 60-days’ worth of malware alerts. And this is why Sony was hacked after its IT team knew the company had been under attack for two years.

By turning the map around, executive teams can learn a great deal about their own companies, and better prepare for the inevitable attacks. This is how most companies look from an attacker’s perspective:

• Their security is overwhelmingly focused on generic malware detection and protection against automated threats that aren’t being guided with precision.
• They don’t have a full picture of what is on their networks, the cloud services they’re using, the applications running on those services, and the security postures of their supply chains and partners. Their IT and security teams are peripheral concerns, costs to be managed rather than centers of excellence that support the core business.
• Overall, they are reactive, rather than proactive, in their approach to security.

Each bullet-point above is a weakness that attackers can exploit. This is why companies should learn from attackers in deciding how to defend themselves. Here’s how.

1. Understand your major risks and how adversaries aim to exploit them. If security could be calculated, then adversaries would be the numerator. Companies must understand their unique threatscapes to the greatest possible extent, and generic data are insufficient. Effective security must integrate indicators of compromise (have we been attacked?), tactics, techniques and procedures (how are we being targeted?), identity intelligence (who would target us, and why?), vulnerability intelligence (what is being exploited in the wild?), and attack attribution (is this commodity or targeted?). Only with focused threat intelligence can analysts spend their precious and valuable time investigating the most important incidents, prioritizing those associated with your most formidable adversaries and your greatest business risks. You can go crazy (and broke) trying to play Whack-A-Mole in defense against them all. Instead, identify your most essential assets and focus scarce resources only on those threats that actually pose a risk to your company.

2. Take inventory of your assets and monitor them continuously. If security could be calculated, then inventory would be the denominator. At the simplest level, companies must identify and monitor all of their interconnected assets: is a developer spinning up a thousand virtual machines without your knowledge? What applications are running on the database servers holding your most valuable information? Did an employee connect a new device to your corporate network? Does one of your distant subsidiaries have a new partner? Does your HVAC system connect somehow with your Point of Sale? Periodic assessments, reports that take weeks to prepare, and conclusions that require complex interpretation contribute to gaps in security. Companies must maintain a dynamic, real-time inventory of assets, monitor those assets continuously, and render them visually in way that is simple and intuitive for security and operations teams.

3. Make security a part of your mission. The prevailing approach to security is compliance-focused, cost-constrained, peripheral to the core business, and delegatable by C-suite leaders. Working on a team like that isn’t fun inside any enterprise, and it loses against 21st-century adversaries who know that it’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy. Any defense is only as good as the people doing the defending. The new model of security needs to be about mission and leadership, ensuring that we have the best defenders up against the best attackers. Security is no longer delegable, and the mission of security teams must be synonymous with the mission of the company.

4. Be active, not passive, in hunting adversaries on your network and removing them. The term “active defense” has been tarred as a euphemism for “hacking back,” and companies are ill-advised to go on the offensive: first, it’s illegal to access others’ networks without permission, even if you’re acting in supposed self-defense; and second, it’s just not smart to escalate unless you can dominate, and even the biggest companies will ultimately lose against state or state-sponsored adversaries. So while you cannot go attack the other team on their own turf, you can and increasingly must be active against adversaries inside your own networks. This means assuming not merely that you are under attack, but that your attacker is in, and so you must hunt for a stealthy, persistent human adversary in order to contain and remediate the risk before they can cause damage – dramatically cutting the time between breach and detection from its current average of more than 200 days.

It is easy during these days of frequent and devastating attacks to cry out that the sky is falling, and that the very future of the Internet as a trusted domain of commerce and communication is at stake. But it would be wrong to extrapolate the data points of recent years into a line leading to ruin. Too many of us have too much at stake here, and the combined forces of executives, entrepreneurs, software developers, security teams, and investors all turning the map around can equip us to defend against this next generation of adversaries.

CCSF Web & Mobile App Program Orientations

The Bay Area needs talented, educated coders, designers, and IT professionals! And opportunities for students and job seekers to prepare for web and mobile app design and development abound at CCSF!

The CCSF Web and Mobile App Collaborative is kicking off with a series of events for students and job seekers to learn about a career in tech with City College's Web & Mobile Programs at one of these upcoming orientation meetings:

Tuesday, April 28

Ocean Campus, 50 Phelan Ave.

1-3pm | Science Building, Room 108 or

5-7pm | Science Building, Room 108

Wednesday, April 29

Ocean Campus, 50 Phelan Ave.

12:30-2:30pm | Science Building, Room 100

Wednesday, May 6

Mission Center, 1125 Valencia Street

5:30-7:30pm | Room 275

There is also a new CCSF web and mobile app programs landing page with more details about these events along with program descriptions and how to get started. Share these links and this flyer with your students! If you have any question or want to learn more about how you can help promote the events and programs, contact Anna Colibri at anna@annacolibri.com.

Thanks!

Olivia Herriford

Associate Director

Mid-Pacific ICT Center

SHEER MADNESS: Animal Farm, Part II

Last January 21st, I attended the "Hacking Gender" event hosted by Andrew Keen of TechCrunch at the San Francisco offices of Bloomberg. Even though the topic explored by the esteemed panel and the ensuing discussion that followed clearly illustrated that we have not "come a long way, baby"*,  I was thrilled to see and talk to so many bright and successful women in tech.

Jim Burnett, writer and founder of ExpertOpinions.info, was one of the few male attendees and we struck up a conversation. Below is his post that covers the event and offers some potential solutions that those of us who "don't intend to shut up" about this problem can pursue. He must have found a kindred spirit in me because I'm quoted.

*For those of you that don't remember or have the years, "You've come a long way, baby" was a catch phrase of the feminist movement of the late 1960s.

Olivia Herriford - MPICT

SHEER MADNESS: Animal Farm, Part II
by Jim Burnett, founder of ExpertOpinions.info

In Part I of “Animal Farm,” I suggested importing some gorilla behavioral specialists from a San Antonio zoo to work their magic on chauvinistic males in Startupland.

After all, if monkey whisperers from Texas can enlighten Patrick, a 23-year-old gorilla evicted from a zoo in Dallas to San Antonio due to his sexist behavior – including menacing and even sneering at female gorillas – maybe they can do something about the off-the-charts sexism that permeates Silicon Valley.

In the meantime, a number of less radical ideas were floated at “Hacking Gender,” an event held at the Bloomberg News offices at Pier 3 in San Francisco in January.

The panel was stellar:

Host Andrew Keen, author of two brilliant and dystopian books, The Cult of the Amateur and Digital Vertigo, which detail the damage done by the Internet to the culture and to the individual. Keen’s non-fiction presages Dave Eggers spooky 2013 novel The Circle, a not-so-farcical look at a Googlish company cheerfully destroying any last vestige of individual privacy.

Joan Blades, co-founder of the progressive and influential groups MoveOn.org and MomsRising.org; a humble superstar activist who also founded a start-up, Berkeley Systems, with her husband.
Nilofer Merchant, former Apple employee, start-up guru and advisor, writer, TED talk speaker, major mover and shaker in Startupland and beyond; known as Jane Bond in tech circles.

Vivek Wadhwa, professor and trenchant critic of the male-centric nature of Startupland, author of an upcoming book on the subject as well as author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent; named one of the Top 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech by Time in 2013.

Elizabeth Stark, a leader of the open Internet movement to promote free expression; founder and CEO of Threshold, which helps communities tackle social problems, Harvard law grad and former law school/tech professor at Stanford and Yale.

Some good ideas came from the panel, and moderator Keen pushed for concrete recommendations. Blades emphasized creating a kinder and gentler working environment for working moms and women. Wadhwa advocated requiring tech companies to disclose the percentages of women and minorities they hire, employ, and promote.

However, the most memorable speaker of the evening, to me, was a young engineer named Jennifer, who grounded the posh event in a hard kernel of day-to-day reality. The daughter of a tech engineer father, Jennifer got hooked on computers from an early age and loves her work.

But not the culture. When a former boss harassed her, she bailed out of Startupland for four years. Now she’s back, still incredibly frustrated with a profession that routinely demeans women, both personally and professionally.

A frustration shared by a number of other people I spoke with after the event, ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s.

Including 64-year-old Olivia Herriford, something of a pioneer in computers and tech. As a black woman who started working as an engineer in the 1970s, Olivia often faced mule-like obstinacy when she was tasked with teaching engineers how to use new software.

Things haven’t improved all that much. “There’s not as much open hostility now, but it’s still very difficult for women,” says Herriford.

No kidding.

The stats starkly illustrate both scope of the problem and the snail-like pace of progress. Women in Startupland are mired in something of a 10 percent ghetto. Only about 10 percent of start-up founders are women. Only about 10 percent of tech company board members are women. Only about 10 percent of venture capital partners are female. The number of college women in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math – is declining.

And the general attitude toward gender issues in the Valley? Mostly a chimp-like “What, Me Worry?” When the organizers of the October, 2013 “Hackers and Hookers” Halloween party were criticized, they half-heartedly apologized, clearly puzzled by the fuss – “it was all in the spirit of good fun and humor.”

When Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced an all-male 10 member board of directors, the Valley yawned. At least until The New York Times broke the story, featuring critical quotes from Wadhwa. Costolo declared he couldn’t find a suitable candidate to join his boys club and didn’t want to appoint a female in order to “check off a box.” Eventually Twitter appointed one female board member, thereby upholding the 10 percent standard. Box checked and problem solved!

Still, there are a few green sprigs of progress sprouting in the Valley. Kudos to 500 Startups, for example, which recently announced a new Angel List syndicate to fund women entrepreneurs. .

Olivia Herriford, for one, still holds out hope. Now the assistant director at the Mid-Pacific Information & Communication Technologies Center at City College of San Francisco, Herriford envisions a brighter future for tech women. So maybe it behooves the rest of us to adopt an optimistic view.

And offer some potential solutions. If you don’t intend to shut up – and as a writer I don’t – then those of us in the peanut gallery are obligated put up.

So I will.

Right after a few disclaimers.

(1) I claim no special expertise on gender issues, especially since Facebook just proclaimed the existence of over 50 different gender classifications. Really, who knew?

(2) It is much easier for guys to be flamethrowers. The most outspoken panelist at “Hacking Gender” was Wadhwa. Women who are equally caustic are almost certain to be labeled with the b-word. Or worse.

CREATING A STEM PIPELINE
Lots of talk about this. Lots of research. Lots of handwringing. Some action on the local level and recognition on the national level. Time to think bigger.

(1) Put together a serious pool of money.

Let’s say $50 million per year. Big money in most circles, but the major tech companies could scrounge it up from the loose change under their leather sofa cushions.

It’s not much to ask. Especially after Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Intel successfully petitioned the Labor Department in 2012, enabling them to skirt the rule requiring disclosure of employee demographic statistics.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, The Fearful Five claimed disclosing statistics relating to race and gender would cause them “competitive harm.”
Huh?

It’s hard to say whether the petition from the tech giants or the granting of said petition by the government was more disgraceful. Let’s call it a draw.

(2) Recruit STEM Girls like basketball coaches recruit star athletes.

Hire a group of recruiters to scour the country to identify talented 8, 10, 12, and 14-year old girls who are interested in STEM. If you’re an exceptional 10-year-old girl basketball player from Missouri or Alabama, Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer knows your name. And probably your favorite breakfast cereal. Select 100 STEM Girls every year.

(3) Make STEM Girls Cool

Sure, it’s fine and dandy to take girls to museums and zoos, as many local STEM programs do.
Better to take them to Disneyland. Or to meet their favorite TV and movie stars in Hollywood. Or to talk math with Danica McKellar and sit in a race car with Danica Patrick.

Every successful sports team gets a White House welcome, so take STEM Girls to DC to meet Michelle Obama. Give STEM Girls a new car when they get their drivers license. Get local papers and national magazines to write them up in the same way jocks are publicized – a January ESPN article profiled fourth grader Jaden Newman, a 9-year-old girl who is lighting it up against Florida high school boys. Hire filmmakers to shoot documentaries about STEM Girls.

When STEM Girls are the envy of their classmates, the pipeline problem will begin to disappear.

SHINING A LIGHT ON VC FIRMS

Since we’re getting ready to present to angels and VCs, I’ve been researching firms to find partners who are suitable matches for ExpertOpinions.

VC web sites are enlightening. For all sorts of reasons. In many cases, you’ll see a group photo. Often, it looks like a page from an all-boys school yearbook.

If VC firms were kicking ass, it would be easier for them to justify the absence of women partners. But as I mentioned in a previous column, the Harvard Business Review reported in 2013 that most VC firms since 1999 have struggled just to break even. Many investors in VC funds would be better off buying savings bonds.

Diversity would be good for gender equality. It almost certainly would improve the bottom line at VC firms as well. Women partners bring a broader perspective – no pun intended, I swear to God, wherever She may be — in evaluating start-ups. And female VCs are more likely to champion the cause of women start-up founders.

So let’s encourage VC firms to do well by doing good.

Remember those old wanted posters at the post office? Take the group photos from the all or almost all-male VC firms and publicize them, with a screaming headline at the top of the page reading:

WANTED: DIVERSITY

The wanted posters can be posted online and off, emblazoned on websites and tacked up on coffee house bulletin boards.

Harsh? Perhaps. Embarrassing? Probably.

Yet no more so than rubbing a dog’s nose in the mess it makes. Yeah, I know. That’s probably not a good way to discipline a Labrador or a German Shepherd.

But some people can be much harder to train than dogs.

Original post at  http://www.foundersspace.com/answers/sheer-madness-animal-farm-part-ii/

San Francisco's Class War, By the Numbers: Counting the New Tech Boom

Originally posted by Susie Cayle in the Nib, here's an interesting graphical portrayal of the facts and figures.

(https://medium.com/the-nib/700c51a43a4)

MPICT Featured in CENIC Quarterly Update

Coverage of MPICT Executive Director, James Jones' presentation at the 2013 Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) Annual Conference was a featured article in CENIC's most recently published quarterly newsletter.  The conference, held March 11-13, 2013, provided James the opportunity to preview findings from the ICT Foundational Competencies Employment Demand in California report and, obviously, it was very well received! Read the article or view the presentation.

2013 Winter Conference Interviews

Following are links to a series of interviews conducted at the Winter 2013 ICT Educator Conference in San Francisco on MPICT's YouTube Channel.

Check 'em out!

MPICT Winter Conference 2013 Interview Recordings

1)    Interview with John Carrese & Zhenya Lindstrom (California Community College Economic and Workforce Development Centers of Excellence)

2)    Interview with Peggy Maxson (Department of Homeland Security)

3)    Interview with Karl Cureton (National Minority Technology Council)

4)    Interview with Dave Nelson (VMware) & Rich Weeks (NDG)

5)    Interview with Kim Yohannan (EMC) & Rich Weeks (NDG)

6)    Interview with Steve Wright (iima4biz)

7)    Interview with Ross Brunson and Chuck Bixby (Linux Professional Institute)

8)    Interview with Interview with Dr. Carol Engler (Ashland University)

9)    Interview with Mark Conway (NetApp)

10) Interview with Shari Liss (iisme; Industry Initiatives for Science and Math  Education)

11) Interview with Chuck Bixby (LPI), Ross Brunson (LPI), and Rich Weeks (NDG)

12) Interview with Mike Qaissaunee (Brookdale CC & ICT Center/STCC)

13) Interview with Nic Xenos (Juniper Networks)

14) Interview with Jane Ostrander (Experiential Learning Center)

15) Interview with Una Daly (Community College Outreach)

16) Interview with Jeff Larson (SFUSD)

17) Interview with Elizabeth Wallner (Wallner Consulting Services/JSPAC)

18) Interview with Ron Lichty on Agile Methods

19) Interview with Ann Beheler (Convergence Technology Center)

20) Interview with Donna Milgram (IWITTS)

Class of 2013: What's Pushing Women Out of the Sciences

Originally posted by Bruce Kasanoff here
May 21, 2013

Graduates of 2013, you don't need to hear from another gray-haired man. The invitation to create this speech arrived the same day my daughter - who is also graduating this month - sent me a draft of her senior thesis. I took this as a sign it would be more helpful for me to share insights from one of your own.

Alyssa's thesis explores why women drop out of STEM majors: science, technology, engineering and math.

In the United States, men comprise about 75% of all STEM majors. There are many reasons why this is a problem, but let me just state the most obvious. For economic reasons, we need far more people to go into these majors; if half our citizens shy away from these majors, we will never have as much talent as we need.

I'd like to suggest that it is up to you to solve this problem. Not because my generation can't solve it, but because we haven't.

Alyssa attends Hamilton College in upstate New York. When it comes to attracting women to STEM majors, Hamilton actually does better than many colleges and universities. Most of their science departments, except for Computer Science and Physics, have roughly equal numbers of men and women. For the first time ever, this year their math department has more female than male majors.

Alyssa interviewed two groups of women at Hamilton: current STEM majors and those who are STEM "dropouts."

Both groups perceived that STEM classes tend to be competitive and unfriendly, in contrast to how other courses are taught at Hamilton. The majors "dealt with it," but even they didn't like it.

To quote from Alyssa's thesis: most dropouts and majors agreed that the competitive culture and climate of the classroom was the worst in the introductory courses. These courses tended to encourage memorization and had a weed-out feel... students often felt like professors did not necessarily want to see them succeed.

College is supposed to be hard. You are supposed to be challenged. There is nothing wrong with that. Hamilton has many other majors that are also difficult, but female students perceive that they are not as competitive and unfriendly.

Hamilton is a small, liberal arts school. I can only imagine what many of you faced in larger schools. One thing is for certain: too few female graduates will be entering STEM professions this year, even though many of you remain interested in STEM areas.

Alyssa's thesis also reports that: the STEM dropouts were students who had legitimate interest in the fields, and who may have pursued the majors to completion had they not perceived an unwelcoming and dissatisfying culture. The STEM majors, on the other hand, were intensely dedicated and goal driven; most of them planned to become researchers or professors from a very young age and were not willing to let obstacles get in their way. That is, often times the STEM majors were unhappy with the STEM culture, yet had such a strong end goal in mind that they were willing to disregard their feelings about their courses, and sought out welcoming environments in other disciplines to compensate for their experiences in their major.
This is a huge problem, and it's not just because we're not attracting enough women into STEM majors. It's also a problem because we are teaching STEM professionals to interact in what some might consider to be an antisocial manner.

Our companies and institutions would be much better served by professionals who know how to collaborate on diverse teams. Increasingly, programmers and designers, engineers and marketers, data scientists and customer experience professionals must work side by side.

Some of you are STEM dropouts, but you still harbor an interest in these subjects. For you, I have two words: graduate school. It's not too late to give it one more try.

Some of you are STEM graduates. Some will go into teaching, or training. You will work with other disciplines. At the risk of sounding like an old softie, I urge you to work towards a kinder, gentler, and more welcoming environment. I find it difficult to understand why computer science or math can't be taught in small groups, especially when I see kids in my neighborhood - literally kids - teaching each other to program, and to solve tough programming challenges.

The prolific author, Douglas Rushkoff, wrote a book called Program or Be Programmed. “Choose the former,” says Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.”
The prolific author, Douglas Rushkoff, wrote a book called Program or Be Programmed. “Choose the former,” says Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.”

Your generation can't allow programming and Big Data and product development and hard science to be the domain of half our population. You can't afford to condemn the women who all their lives have wanted to work in STEM professions to spend their careers as a minority.

My generation got it wrong. Yours can do far better.

Bruce Kasanoff (Twitter: NowPossible) can be found at Kasanoff.com.

women & girls leadership summit 2013 (may 1 in sf)

Registration and additional details

NCRIC Cyber Internship Program

Northern California Regional Intelligence Center
Cyber Internship Program

Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (“NCRIC”) Mission

The NCRIC’s mission is to coordinate the exchange of criminal intelligence, threats, and hazards and facilitate regional communication among Northern California Law Enforcement, First Responders, Government and Private Sector Partners.

Overview of Cyber Internship Program

The NCRIC Cyber Internship Program provides an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students interested in cyber threat intelligence and cyber security to work with Federal, State, local, and tribal government and law enforcement in support of the NCRIC mission.

Chosen cyber interns will learn about the intelligence and law enforcement fields through both formal and on‐the‐job training, and will be responding to real world threats, hazards, and situations.

Cyber interns will work with cyber threat intelligence analysts, the NCRIC information technology team, and all levels of law enforcement to produce cyber products and applications for NCRIC partners – including cyber threat and vulnerability assessments, novel mobile and web‐based applications, malware analysis studies, and cyber threat trend reports. NCRIC law enforcement partners include local Police Departments, FBI, DHS, DoD, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service, and more.

Examples of potential projects cyber interns will work on include producing analytical products on malicious cyber actors, development of honeypot systems, drafting malware analysis reports, writing code to automatically input data from relevant sources into GIS databases for use during live‐events, creating mobile applications to warn NCRIC partners about threats in the field, developing NCRIC‐specific RSS feeds, and drafting trend reports on prevalent malware in the NCRIC Area of Responsibility (“AOR”).

Application Process

Participating colleges and universities are asked to submit up to six applicants for each semester or summer session. Students within the Computer Science, Information Technology, Geographic Information Systems, and Computer Engineering majors are especially encouraged to apply.

Applicants for the Cyber Internship Program must submit a resume, a letter of recommendation, a copy of his/her college transcript to date with current GPA, a writing or project sample, and a short summary discussing why he/she wishes to intern for the NCRIC.

These items must be sent via email to CyberInternship@ncric.org. Please scan and email the transcript copy, or fax it to the attention of “NCRIC Cyber Internship Program” at 415.553.7411.

The short summary must not exceed 500 words. The writing or project sample can include college‐course submissions or especially impressive non‐academic projects (e.g. a website, an example of a web‐based or mobile application, etc.). Selections are based upon academic achievements, professional projects and accomplishments, area of study, life/work experiences, and the needs of the NCRIC.

The applicants’ résumés will be examined, and within two weeks a telephonic “first stage” interview will be conducted by the NCRIC Cyber Unit. After passing through the first stage telephonic interview, the potential candidate will be scheduled for an on‐site panel interview with the NCRIC management staff. After these interviews a maximum of four applicants will be selected for the duration of the semester or summer. The initial offer is conditional pending successful completion of a background investigation.

Chosen applicants who are part‐time interns will be required to work a minimum of 180 hours at the NCRIC or an average of twelve hours per week. Full‐time interns will be required to work thirty to forty hours per week and as the need arises if there is a crisis or disaster.

Background Investigation

Selected interns will have to undergo an extensive background investigation conducted by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. The initial offer is conditional pending successful completion of the background investigation.

Non‐Disclosure Agreement (“NDA”)

All cyber interns will also be required to sign an NDA, which will clearly state that all programs, systems, products, and other intellectual property developed or affected by the intern will be and remain the property of the NCRIC. Further, the unauthorized disclosure of information to which the interns have access, or may obtain access, will be considered a breach of the NDA and may result in the termination of their relationship with the NCRIC and prosecution to the full extent of the applicable laws.

Position Details and Requirements

Internships with the NCRIC are uncompensated positions. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship. No interns will displace regular employees, and chosen interns are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.

All work done by the cyber interns will be done under the close supervision of existing staff. This work may include, inter alia, producing and handling sensitive information, responding to real threats to the NCRIC AOR, assessing and addressing NCRIC Partner vulnerabilities, and representing the NCRIC as a whole. As such, all cyber interns are expected to conduct themselves in the respectful and professional manner appropriate to the position of the internship. Any actions or conduct by the intern considered unbecoming of any employee, contractor, or other representative of the NCRIC will not be tolerated and will result in termination of intern status.

The NCRIC shall provide an educational work environment free of verbal, written, or physical conduct thathas the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with the intern’s performance or that may create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment. The NCRIC shall abide by all applicable laws and regulations.

The internship is designed to be a well‐supervised educational experience. The NCRIC will provide the training, tools, equipment and access to communication necessary to effectively and efficiently complete the tasks required. Failure to complete the mandatory work hours or poor performance will result in notification of the college or university to which the intern is associated and cancellation of intern status with NCRIC.

Employers and Industry Invited to SF ICT Pathways Stakeholder Summit

San Francisco ICT Pathways Project

Stakeholder Summit

April 12, 2013

The Mid-Pacific ICT Center (MPICT) and the CCC ICT Collaborative, along with our partners, Boston-area Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC), San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), San Francisco Office of Workforce and Economic Development (OEWD), Bay Area Vido Coalition (BAVC), and WestEd, invite your to attend the third stakeholder summit for the San Francisco Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Pathways Project on April 12, 2013.  

The San Francisco ICT Pathways Project is completing the first year of its three-year effort to define, promote and facilitate a collaborative approach to filling the ICT workforce development pipeline in the San Francisco/Bay Area. With just two years left on the grant from BATEC, we're excited to report on the achievement of significant milestones and the development of mutually beneficial partnerships with the partners listed above that promise to sustain the outcomes and work in progress. Now is the time to vet our findings, outcomes, and plans for the next two years with our business advisory. Your assessment and feedback provides essential guidance and your participation will be extremely valuable.   

The objectives of this meeting are to

• Update stakeholders on project progress and outcomes
• Share how a SF ICT workforce ecosystem is forming
• Share 2013-2014 plans and get feedback
• Provide the opportunity for active working groups to convene and continue their work

Please RSVP to Olivia Herriford at oherriford@mpict.org 

 

Following are the details and logistics:

Who:

• SFUSD High School Faculty and Administrators in Computer Science, Networking, Digital Media, and related programs
• City College of San Francisco Faculty and Administrators in the CS, CNIT, Multimedia, Business Technologies and Broadcasting
• Interested local government and community based organizations
• Business industry and employer advisors
• (Please forward this email or let us know others we should invite)

When and Where:

• Friday, April 12th, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm

City College of San Francisco Ocean campus

9am-12pm Multi-Use Building Room 251

12:00-3:00pm Pierre Coste Room (including lunch)

The project will cover substitute teachers for SFUSD faculty. Maps and parking permits will be sent to confirmed attendees the week of April 8th. Here's the draft agenda:

      I.   WELCOME, Coffee and networking (9:00-9:15)

     II.   Project Update (9:15 - 9:45)

1. Recap of goals
2. Report on progress, accomplishments

    III.   The Emerging Ecosystem (9:45 - 10:45)

1. OEWD/TechSF > CCSF and BAVC
2. BAVC > CCSF and OEWD/TechSF
3. MPICT > OEWD/TechSF, BAVC, SamaUSA

   IV.    Break (10:45 - 11:00)

    V.    Pathways to ICT Education and Careers in Other Communities (11:00 - 12:00)

1. BATEC: Progress in Chicago and Las Vegas
2. CDE: Progress with similar collaborations in Sacramento and Orange County

   VI.         Lunch (12:00 - 1:00)

Guest Speaker: Tammy Hagans BAVC Digital Pathways Graduate

  VII.    What's ahead (1:00 - 1:15)

1. 1. 2013-2014 Priorities and Projects

 VIII.    Breakouts to project working groups (1:15 - 2:30)

1. 1. CS Curriculum Articulation
   2. Broadcasting summer class
   3. MS Business Apps summer class
   4. Graphics 25 summer class

   IX.         Return to full group for report out (2:30 - 3:00)

Thanks and we look forward to your participation!

Olivia Herriford

Associate Director

Mid-Pacific ICT Center

MEDIA CAREER TIPS: LUCKY 13

Digital Pathways | Posted on: Saturday, March 16 2013
By Carol Varney, Executive Director, BAVC

Last week I attended the Civic Center Community Benefit District Mixer and Reception for San Francisco City Supervisor London Breed. When addressing the assembled crowd, Supervisor Breed shared her desire to create jobs for youth in her district, to equip them with the tools they would need to attain jobs in the City, and her hope that this would be possible not just for young people in her district, but for youth citywide.

Supervisor Breed’s words were in my head as I listened, two nights later, to a career panel of six Bay Area-based media professionals sharing their career stories with an audience of BAVC Next Gen students, TechSF participants, city officials and the public. Over the course of two hours we got to hear from panelists who were the first in their families to go the college, many of whom took career paths that were not exactly “direct,” and each of whom gave straight talk based on their journey. Every one of them had a passion, but in the beginning, no real network to help get them to the their destination.

Michelle Channel from Mission Graduates moderated the discussion, and below are 13 take-away tips from Emma at Twilio, Carrie – an investigative news reporter and documentary filmmaker, Judy from IDEO, Jonathan from Zynga, Ryan – an independent audio engineer who works with Overlap and Ghostcat Studios, and CB from Community Bridge Video.

Top 13 Career Tips from the Field

1) Don’t burn bridges! The people sitting next to you right now are the ones who will hire you – and the ones you will hire – in the future.

2) Network. Stay in touch with people. You’ll get more jobs and connections from networking and the people you are talking to and in class with right now than from anywhere else. Don’t just call these people for work, call them to find out how they are doing. Do it because you want to and because it’s smart.

3) Don’t just send emails to the places you want to work – pick up the phone and call. Talk directly to people and ask to meet them in person.

4) Live below your means. Don’t spend all that you have.

5) Follow your passion. Keep a focus on what drives you because it will get you through the hard times.

AND

5a) It’s okay if you don’t know what you want to do right now. Pick a direction and be okay with going that way for a while. You can change direction and it’s not going to be the end of the world.

6) Limit how much you will work for free. Volunteering is great but you have to eat. If you are doing a job for no pay, make a deal with yourself about how long you will work for free and when that time is up, ask for a paycheck.

7) Persist. If you know what you want to do, persevere. Not every idea is a good idea and sometimes things will go very, very wrong, but do not give up. Learn from the mistakes you make, pick yourself up and get back to it.

8) Identify mentors. A mentor could be a teacher, a friend, someone in the industry you want to break into – anyone who provides you support and good advice. Along with your passion, mentors will help you to see your way through challenging times.

9) Be a generalist with a specialty. Understand the technology you want to work with, because even if you aren’t a hands-on technical person in the industry, understanding the language and how things work will get you hired and keep you employed. Keep those skills updated.

10) Know if a place you want to work is a good cultural fit: This is where being an intern, going for an informational interview or talking with employees at the place where you think you might want to work will make a difference. Is it the kind of place you can see yourself being happy?

11) Collaboration is key. Being able to work well with other people is extremely important. Learn how to work well on a team and you’ll keep being asked to join successful groups.

12) Show up on time. Be the one who is trustworthy, who works hard, and who people know they can count on.

And the final word from Jonathan Bach at Zynga?



13) “Don’t assume something is out of your reach. Try.”

BAVC supports students from throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area, including residents of Visitacion Valley, North Beach, Ingleside, Balboa Terrace, Bayview, Sunnyside, the Mission, the Fillmore and Civic Center (including 10 students from Supervisor Breed's district), and youth who travel from as far away as Alameda, Daly City, Oakland, and even Suisun City. I hope the panel brought students in the audience one step closer to Supervisor Breed’s goal for youth in the City and the Bay Area to find employment right here. I know that when they had a chance to talk with the panelists in small groups the students asked questions for 20 minutes and I heard several asking for ways to stay in touch.

After the event I walked with panelist Carrie Lozano from San Francisco Public Library to Powell Station, along Market Street. Around Seventh Street we passed a group of five older men standing on the sidewalk chatting, and as we walked by one of them shouted out “Hey! Lady in the glasses! I just heard you talk and it was really inspiring! Thank you!”. Lesson 2 and 3? Check.



From all of us at BAVC, thanks to the panelists, to Mission Graduates, and to the library for hosting us after a last-minute site change! And thanks to the BAVC funders who believe that panels like this and programs like Next Gen and TechSF make a difference in the lives of the young people, and all of us, in the Bay Area community.

Photos by Ian Davis