Gender gap in the classroom

As graduate student Iseley Marshall sits down in her  computer science class, she realizes she is the only female.

As the only female student majoring in computer science at the University of South Dakota, she’s used to being the only female in her classes.

“I think we kind of stereotype it. We kind of decide computer science is for guys,” Marshall said.

Marshall said she first became interested in computer science when she had to take a class to complete her physics undergraduate major.

When looking at graduate programs, Marshall decided to major in computer science as well as physics for her graduate degree.

According to Dave Struckman-Johnson, Computer Science department chair, Marshall is the only female computer science major in the undergraduate and graduate program combined.

Struckman-Johnson said it has not always been that way. He said he remembers a time when he would take computer science students to conferences and half of them would be women.

“That suggests to me that it’s not that women can’t do it, they’re choosing not to,” Struckman-Johnson said.  “Things haven’t changed in ability, it’s attitude.”

Although she said she has never experienced it, Marshall said she worries she may get unfair advantages to her male counterparts because she is the only female in the major.

“I’ve been told, and just recently too, that it will be easier for me to get a job because I’m female,” Marshall said.

Struckman-Johnson said many employers try to have as even of a workplace as possible when it comes to gender.

Another college informed Marshall that because of her gender it would be easy for her to get accepted into their computer science program.

The University of South Dakota also offers a scholarship called the Amy Fix Scholarship, which takes preference to female students.

While computer science is dominated by men, the opposite is true for nursing.

Men make up only 11 percent of nursing students at USD.

“I just think it’s a stereotypically female-dominated profession,” Junior Jesse Pechous, one of the few males majoring in nursing, said. “A lot of men just don’t go into it.”

Pechous said he first noticed the absence of male nurses when he would go to the hospital. He said he has always had female nurses, never a male.

Pechous said he decided to go into the nursing field because he is interested in becoming a nurse practitioner.

Carla Dieter, Nursing Department chair, said the trend of having a few men in the major is changing.

Dieter said it is becoming more acceptable for males to enter the nursing field and said the numbers of male nurses entering the field is rising both at USD and throughout the country.

Dieter and Pechous said the only disadvantage that occurs from being a male nurse is that some patients prefer to only be seen by female nurses. Dieter said males are still expected to perform at the same level as their female counterparts.

“They are all held to the same standards. Our male students are just as capable as our female students,” Dieter said. “If it’s their passion and nursing is what they want to do then they will meet the standards just as anyone else.”