Changing Times

That was then. Caption: Western Data Processing Center UCLA Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy (left) and IBM Western Regional Manager Leonard E. Clark (right). Photograph, c. 1960. Clark shows Murphy a transistor circuit from the Western Data Processing Center's new IBM 7090 computer (in background).
https://picturingucla.library.ucla.edu/photos/universityarchives:27395
The Center was located next to the building that now houses the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs but at that time was the School of Business Administration. The photo is likely taken later than the 1960 caption date indicates.

This is now:

The UCLA School of Education and Information Studies has launched Momentum: Accelerating Equity in Computing and Technology, an important research initiative to diversify computing and technology, with an intensive focus on the recruitment of women and people of color into computing education and technology career pathways.

“The persistent lack of diversity in computing and technology requires that we achieve greater momentum in seeking evidence-based solutions,” said Linda Sax, a professor of higher education at UCLA and founding director of Momentum.

Momentum will engage in critical research and actions to diversify participation in computing and technology fields. Their work, supported by Pivotal Ventures (an incubation and innovation company founded by Melinda Gates), the National Science Foundation and others, will examine interventions from the perspectives of students, faculty, administrators and academic leaders, catalog what is known about efforts to diversify computing, and inform best practices for broadening participation in computing.

The effort is sorely needed. Women currently hold just 26% of computing jobs, with African American women making up only 3% and Latina women making up just 1% of the tech workforce.

Momentum will build on and expand work that Sax and Kate Lehman, an academic researcher at UCLA and the associate director of Momentum, have done since 2014 with BRAID, which stands for Building, Recruiting, and Inclusion for Diversity. That research examined diversity efforts and progress among computing departments committed to increasing gender and racial/ethnic diversity in their undergraduate computing programs...

Full news item at https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-momentum-equity-in-computing-and-technology