Combine the majors, boost the diversity: what Khoury College learned from its own programs

The paper, co-authored by Benjamin J. Hescott, Jessica Biron, Ali Ressing, Melissa Peikin, Sarah Maravetz, and Alan Mislove, studied how pursuing two disciplines in one of Khoury College’s combined majors impacted student interest as compared to studying one computing major.

“The idea of combined majors with computing, data science, and cybersecurity is that computing is relevant to every discipline, and the ability to combine it with another area increases what you can do in that other area,” Brodley said. “For example, someone who does journalism and computer science has more careers that they can pursue, in addition to just doing journalism or just working at a tech company—such as becoming a journalist who writes about tech or helping create the software that customizes news feeds for consumers.”

Their most significant finding was that having combined majors was a driving factor in the growth of women’s representation in computing majors at Northeastern.

Northeastern University currently offers 42 combined majors that include one of Khoury College’s main computing disciplines: computer science, cybersecurity, or data science. Of those, 29 have been created in the last seven years with the goal of increasing gender diversity.

“We thought, ‘What if we combine majors that have been historically favored by people who identify as women? Then maybe we can change the demographics of computer science, while also creating the interdisciplinary thinkers that the world needs now,’” said Brodley, who initially joined Northeastern in 2014 as dean of Khoury College of Computer Sciences with this goal in mind. “And the results have been stunning.”

For Fall 2020, the research team found that 44.6% of Northeastern’s 2,800+ computing students are pursuing combined majors, and of that percentage, 39% are women. For the Fall 2021 incoming first-year students, women made up 46% of the students pursuing combined majors, while women were only 23% of those pursuing a non-combined computing major. These numbers surpass the 2020 IPEDS report that revealed only 21.5% of U.S. computing graduates that year were women.

Increase in women-identified enrollment in CS at Northeastern due to newly added combined majors. CS=computer science; DS=data science; and CY=cybersecurity. Graphic (2022) by Josephine Pettigrew.

Brodley also noted that Northeastern did not “lean into” women applicants, as women make up approximately the same percentage of the incoming class as that of total applicants.

Overall, the goal of the paper is to expose other educators and people in academia to the benefits of interdisciplinary computer science and how it could improve gender diversity in their own programs. In addition to the formal paper presentation, Brodley hosted a “Birds of a Feather” discussion at the symposium with Professor Valerie Barr of Mount Holyoke to dive into interdisciplinary computing and how to implement it at other institutions. Close to 50 computing faculty attended the discussion with explicit interest in creating interdisciplinary majors at their own institutions.

“The goal was to write the paper in such a way that people could not only see the progress in diversifying computing by creating and scaling our combined majors,” Brodley said, “but also to lay out all the advantages, barriers, and considerations if you want to create one of your own.”