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The Chemistry Between High School Students and Computer Science

Computer science enrollments have started to rise again, but the percentage of women undergraduates in computer science is still low. Some studies indicate this might be due to a lack of awareness of computer science at the high school level. We present our experiences running a 5-year, high school outreach program that introduces information about computer science within the context of required chemistry courses. We developed interactive worksheets using Molecular Workbench that help the students learn chemistry and computer science concepts related to relevant events such as the gulf oil spill. Our evaluation of the effectiveness of this approach indicates that the students do become more aware of computer science as a discipline, but system support issues in the classroom can make the approach difficult for teachers and discouraging for the students.