"The percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent from 39 percent in 2004-2005” according to the National Science Foundation surveys. However when it comes to computer science in particular, “the proportion of women has been falling.” “Twenty-five years ago, more young women in colleges and universities were drawn to computer science than today.” __Randall Stross.

My name is Joyce Bevins and I was raised by my grandparents in West Philadelphia. As a child I always knew I wanted to be one of the first in my family to go off to school at a four year University. Currenty I am a Junior at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) located in North Carolina, majoring in computer science with a minor in aviation science. I gained an interest for computers in the six grade when I join Y.E.S (Youth Empowerment Services). Our goal was to create a website for the Haddington Community. Even back then I noticed that there were more males than females in the program. The lack of women in the computer science field overall has influenced me to farther my education and enhance my knowlege about computers. As technology expands and the use of computers increases, the more I become inquisitive about this field and its opportunities.

"When the door of opportunity comes, it's up to you to go through the threshold". I was given the opportunity to be a member in the "Center of Excellence for Remote Sensing Education and Research" (CERSER ) program at ECSU.This program focuses on teaching undergraduate students how to conduct research, build computer skills, hands on training, networking and acquires summer internships.The training that I’ve obtained through CERSER consisted of Linux, Dream Weaver, Mac OSX, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft office and more. During my freshman year in CERSER I was a part of “The Undergraduate Research Multimedia Team of 2008-2009” where we “focused on numerous fields, which included installations of content management systems, inquiring results, and web utilization.” Our main focus was to study the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies to support scientific research and provide educational resources. Web 2.0 technologies include social networking, text and data mining, knowledge incorporation environments, tagging, visualization, and mashups. CERSER is like a stepping stool because it is preparing me for the next level of education, which will be graduate school. In spring of 2009 we traveled to Baltimore Maryland to particpate in the BEYA Conference.

In summer of 2009, I traveled to Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington Indiana to participate in the STEM initiative program which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. My research that I conducted there was creating a social networking application for Polar Grid by using Facebook Application programming Interface (API) and web technologies such as XML, Apache, and MYSQL. During the guess lectures at IU I had the chance to network with professional and experienced people who have earn thier bachelor, masters and even PHD degrees. We also traveled to Michigan University for a weekend to attend the CIC SROP Conference and present our research for the “Poster Presentations”. The CIC SROP conference was for undergrade and graduate students. The purpose of the conference was to encourage students to not only earn a bachelors and Masters degree but to reach for a Ph.d degree as well.

In CERSER, during the academic year of 2009-2010, I was apart of the "CRISIM Research Team" and we anaylized data and evaluated the features on martian Mars. We then categlorize the images based on their levels and weaknesses of data. Our main focus was to create a program using map lab to classify CRISM data in a shorter time frame than the long process of classifying by hand. The CRISM research consisted of manually classifying images from Mars and placing them into excel’s data base, downloading images and storing them into Kitoto’s server so that the program can read and return results of the overall images and mineral images. These images can be classified as excellent, fair, poor, and absent. The classification of each image showed whether there is a lot, little, or no water in each kind of mineral. In spring of 2010, we traveled to Baltimore Maryland to attend the BEYA conference again. I also had the opportunity to travel to Jackson State University to participate in the ADMI Conference.

This past summer I traveled back to Indiana University, in Bloomington Indiana to conduct research and participate in the STEM Program. In the STEM program I was placed on the visualization team. Our research was to create a research tool for 3D data point visualization and clustering analysis for Indiana University's bioinformatics and cheminformatics research labs. This researched project consisted of using and learning XNA, Barnes-Hut Tree algorithm, C#, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition, R, PlotViz, Euclidean distances, and H Clustering. This sumer we traveled to Ohio State University to participate in the SROP Conference and present our research.

While at ECSU my goal is to have all the training, skills, and experience I need for graduate school. I intend of conducting more research, attending more conferences,building my resume, gaining a elevated GPA and being the next female to earn a degree in computer science.