In one of South’s computer labs sits current senior Lizzie Baetz, along with the rest of the Computer Science students, instructed by David Rogers. Her and her classmates are all working on their respective projects, ranging from designing graphics to working on applications.

As Baetz looks around the room, she takes in her surroundings and deems it nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that she is the only girl in the class.

Baetz watches her computer; nervousness creeps inside her as she struggles to understand Java, one of the programs used in the class. Baetz is still trying to grasp the concept of what Computer Science is.

“Computer science is a generalization of people who are into video games,” Baetz said. “That’s not always appealing to girls.”

Baetz took the AP Computer Science class last year and says that she enjoyed it so much that she is taking it this year as an independent study.

According to Rogers, lack of female appeal to Computer Science is not only a problem at South, but it’s a problem worldwide.

“The class that I teach is very gender-neutral and there’s nothing in there that would say ‘oh, this is definitely a guys class,’” Rogers said. “I think part of it is that there’s not a […] huge number of female role models in the industry.”

Computer Science courses are about making applications, learning how to use the program Java and the codes on the computer to aid in the application creation process, explained Rogers.

“[For example], you’d like to play a card game against the computer,” Rogers said. “It’s using techniques that you’ve learned previously combined into ways that lead to functioning an application to do what you want. Certainly there’s a ton of correcting your errors, [and] simple mistakes and doing research about how to get that application or computer program to do a specific task.”

Because of the long-term process of creating an application, the class environment is less lecturing and more independent work, according to Rogers. He lets the students take their time and enjoy the creativity that goes along with computer programming.

“It gives [students] the opportunity to express [themselves] creatively which doesn’t always sound like what you would think with computer science, [but] there’s certainly a creative aspect to it,” Rogers said.

Roger’s reports that this year’s AP Computer Science course has no girls, and the regular level class has two. The question that Rogers and others wonder is: how can they increase female enrollement in Computer Science classes?

Currently, Baetz and Rogers are working to answer that question. Baetz is working on coding an Android application to get the word on Computer Science out to other females and break the stigma about Computer Science.

“It’s mostly just putting a female face on the class,” Baetz explained. “[It’s] showing that a girl has taken AP computer science. This is what could be influencing [to other] females.”