Debra J. Richardson was the only woman in many of her college math classes at the University of California, San Diego. As a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she was one of only six female students.
Now Richardson has become the first woman to head up the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, the largest computer science department in the UC system. Richardson, an Orange County native, is overseeing a department of 38 professors, 1,350 undergraduate students and another 265 graduate students. She’s been with UCI since 1987, specializing in testing and analyzing software. In 1998, PC Week magazine named UCI’s computer science department one of nine U.S. schools with top technology programs. Among heavyweights like Harvard, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities, UCI had the second-highest number of computer science graduates at the second-lowest annual cost, according to PC Week. As in her own college days, Richardson stands out as a woman in a male-dominated field. For more than a decade, female enrollment in computer science has been declining nationally,a trend playing out at UCI, she said, though to a lesser extent. Among her goals: attracting and keeping more women in computer science.Richardson, who comes across as intense, involved and in love with education and technology, also is looking to work with local businesses. Her department is a key source of workers for employee-hungry technology companies. Conexant Systems Inc., FileNET Corp., Canon Information Systems and other local companies pay $1,000 to $5,000 annually to post job openings or even send researchers to work with UCI students on projects. The department is focused on cutting-edge segments of the computer industry such as embedded systems,behind-the-scenes chips and software found in everyday items like cars and thermostats. Other areas of study include wireless networking, data storage networks and speedy fibre channel connections, the forte of Costa Mesa-based Emulex Corp. and Aliso Viejo-based QLogic Corp. One of Richardson’s first challenges is a big one. Early next month, a grant application for $100 million in state funds for science and innovation is due. UCI is working with UC San Diego (Richardson’s alma mater) on a joint application bid. The state funding would be spread out over four years, while UCI and San Diego would have to come up with $200 million in matching funds. Part of her task is to line up possible corporate backers for UCI’s share. A state decision is due in November. Richardson recently talked with the Business Journal about the grant, her department, Orange County’s high-tech economy and other issues, including her three Labrador retrievers.
Tell me a little bit about your background?
I grew up in Garden Grove, so I’m a Californian. I was born in Orange and raised in Garden Grove. I went to college at UC San Diego. When I was in high school I thought I wanted to become a math teacher and that’s what I went to college intending to do. Then I got interested in computer science, completed my degree in mathematics and went on for a graduate degree in computer science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
I intended to just get a master’s degree there then come back to California. But I got interested in research and stayed, got my Ph.D. in computer science. I stayed on as a visiting assistant professor until a job opened up at Irvine. My expertise is in software, specifically in quality, validation and testing: how should you test your software to demonstrate its high quality,in functionality, performance, safety, security. How do you test that, not only does it do what it’s supposed to, but also does it satisfy whatever other qualities you might be concerned about.
Why UCI?
UCI has one of the strongest software programs in the country and it was strong (when I came in 1987) as well. It had six faculty members in software engineering and that was a lot at the time.
There were probably only a couple of other places at the time that had a good set of strong researchers in software: Carnegie Mellon, University of Massachusetts and UCI. I didn’t want to go to Pittsburgh and I couldn’t stay at University of Massachusetts because it’s standard that you don’t hire your own graduates. There was no opportunity to be a tenured track professor there.
I considered some other places,I interviewed at UCLA, UC Davis and Santa Barbara, as well as some other places across the country. Overall, software tends not to be an area where there’s a large group of people. I know a number of faculty members who’ve gotten their degrees in the area of software and gone to a university where they are the only software engineering professor. But it’s one of those areas, given the information technology worker shortage, that everyone needs expertise in. So, I think it’s changing.
Strange that something so integral to business would be so underrepresented.
Yep.
What’s the reason for that?
One thing is that computer science is so broad these days,departments dabble in a little bit of everything. Another reason is that software engineering is a young field,young even compared to computer science, which already is a young field. So there have not been many people who really focused on this in their departments, or even with graduate degrees. There aren’t that many people out there with this specialization. But I think that’s changing and I suspect there will be more universities that have a little more focus on software engineering, especially given the need.
Why will it grow?
Software has become pervasive to everything. Students need to be trained and there are a lot of research problems that need to be solved so software will be of high quality. That’s not to say that my area,testing,is going to solve all those problems, because the quality ought to be designed in and my area is there to do a last check on it.
How is that need for software training going to be part of your work here?
It’s certainly not the reason I became the chair. One of my own self-given mandates is to address the information technology worker shortage, and software is one of the areas that needs that. Students educated here who don’t specialize in software still get a good background. It’s one of the required sequences. We will address it that way. We will continue to have a strong software group. We are recruiting in that area for next year to expand it more. But it’s not going to be anything that dominates the department.
What about the IT shortage? What more can you do?
We’ve more than doubled our enrollment in four years. We have 1,600 students,1,350 undergrads this fall and about 265 graduate students. We’re not the largest school. But we are the second-largest major on campus; the only one that’s bigger is biological sciences. We are the largest computer program in the UC system. You might not think of that (distinction) as being in Orange County. We get good applicants,very broad, very diverse,because we have a diverse department. We span from the computer engineering side of things like embedded systems and networking all the way through software, artificial intelligence and data mining, then on to the social impacts of computers, the human/computer interaction and things like that. A lot of IT departments don’t cover that breadth and it makes us very attractive to students, because there are a lot of different options they can pursue. They’re not locked into a traditional computer science program.
What’s the capacity?
We’re a little tight on space. We’re having to work our faculty, instructors and teaching assistants harder to deal with the rapid growth. We’ll have larger classes for the time being.
So is a fundraising campaign coming?
Well, maybe. I would say within my 10-year plan we will begin a capital campaign. I don’t have any hesitation in saying that.
So, considering the capacity constraints you face, are you actually adding to the flow of workers into industry now?
We are adding to the flow. At a university, you increase your student enrollments and sometime after that you get resources. The university has been very good to us, giving us resources to grow. We hired eight new faculty members last year, two new faculty members this year. We have five openings for next year. Of the five, three or four are new positions. You demonstrate the need and you get the funds. The campus doesn’t get the funding for the increased enrollment until they demonstrate the need. At the system level, they have to show the need to the state. The state has been good, too, funding an initiative to address the IT worker shortage. They gave extra funding to the universities specifically targeted to computer engineering and computer sciences. We have no shortage of applicants but sometimes it’s hard for foreign students who finish their degrees here to get their visas and stay in the state and work. That’s unfortunate. I have two Brazilian students who may like to stay here, and they’ll need a different kind of visa. That means a company wanting to hire them and going through the hoops to get one.
What kinds of things do you need to do to further recruit students so you can show the need for more funding?
It has been easy enough to recruit students because of the quality of the program. We have the highest SAT scores on the campus in both verbal and math. We are an independent unit, not in the school of engineering or any other school, so we get measured in the same way as all the other schools here.
Describe your experience as a female math major and computer science graduate in the 1970s?
I was the only woman in many of my math classes in college. I was one of six female students at U. Mass Amherst when I was there. So it’s a little different. You don’t have the same kind of networking support. The percentage of women in computer sciences has actually declined since the mid-1980s. It was about 34% nationally, for undergraduates. It’s down to 16% or 17% nationwide at this point. And it’s even worse as you move up the academic pipeline.
Why?
There’s lots of speculation and various people are doing studies on why. Personally, I think it has to do with the aspects of computing that young people are exposed to,which is games and is very boy-dominated. There are starting to be some things produced these days that are more girl-oriented and I think that may make a difference. But we haven’t seen the effects of that yet. Girls are also exposed to the notion of being a nerd. You’re sitting with your computer and the only thing you’re interacting with is your computer and that’s not something that women or girls generally like. They tend to like to interact with people and work in more collaborative and cooperative environments. I’m sure that has something to do with it. Actually, at UCI we have better numbers than the nation. We’re at about 21% all the way up the pipeline. We have seven women out of 38 faculty. We have about 21% at both the master’s and Ph.D. levels, and in undergraduates, too.
Why do you think that is?
I would guess they’re higher for two reasons. One is we have a fair number of female faculty so women see they can actually stick around and make it in computer science.
Two, is because of the breadth of the program: We have a lot of subjects covered in both undergraduate and graduate programs that are more appealing to women: social impact, human/computer interaction, biomedical computing. But our levels have declined as well. I remember a couple of years back I walked into class of about a hundred students and there were three women in the whole class. And as a female instructor, I believe that women, given the choice, are more likely to take a class by a woman, and there were still only three. I was totally shocked; that was the year I decided I had to get more involved in trying to recruit women.
How will you succeed in recruiting more women?
We have a strong Women in Computer Science group, mostly undergraduates, with some graduate students. There are actually some men who attend the meetings, too. It’s not an exclusive group. But the focus of the group is to encourage women to enroll and stay in computer science. For women already here, our goal is to make it a comfortable environment: make sure they have people they can work with and network with, see good mentors and see that there are a lot of very strong women in computer science who aren’t nerds. I don’t consider myself a nerd.
How do industry leaders such as Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Carly Fiorina affect this?
I think it certainly does have an impact. I think young girls seeing there is a very strong woman that’s now the CEO of Hewlett-Packard will help. One of the things I am planning is hosting a high school women’s computer science fair. We’ve done quite a bit of work for this and we’ll continue on it this fall. The idea is to bring in high school girls who might be interested in computer science if they really knew what it was all about. We’ll have some panels with women at various levels and aspects of computer science,in the workforce, in academics, in graduate school and the student body here,and just kind of tell them what computer science is all about, as well as some fun, fair-like activities. That will probably happen in winter or spring of 2001.
What is happening with your department’s corporate involvement?
We have, I would guess, more than 70 companies, supporting the department financially, half through our industrial affiliates program called ICS partners. The partners range from big companies to small companies. And we work together on a number of activities,advisory boards, internships, recruiting support, and so on. Companies can send a researcher here to work with students and faculty. We have project classes that companies can participate in,give a project class a design challenge and the students work on that problem for that company. The result would be their prototype, and if they decided the concept was a good one, they’d implement it themselves. We’ve done a number of those very successfully. This year we’re starting an advisory board for ICS partners that specifically targets recruiting,how can they do a better job of recruiting? How can we help them on the UCI campus? They already get a resume book and we have a recruitment night and a number of other activities. There is also the Cal-IT2 effort. The governor has an initiative,Cal ISI, which stands for the Institutes for Science and Innovation. The state is funding three sets of institutes throughout the state to the tune of $100 million dollars each, paid over four years. But they require double matching at the university level from outside funding,either federal or industrial funds. So we have to raise $50 million a year if UCI gets one of these. For information technology there is a joint proposal with UCI and UC San Diego that’s called Cal-IT2, which stands for the California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology.
How is that going?
This one did get very good reviews. There was a state review and the governor basically is forming the board. There will be peer reviews done by people knowledgeable in each of the areas, and in other non-IT areas. There is another one going forward from UCI in systems biology. Every campus in the system had at least one they were working on. There were 11 extended abstracts or pre-proposals put forward and six were told to submit full proposals. There will be three chosen from that, at least in this first round. We’re kind of hoping the governor and the legislature realize this is a good thing. Cal-IT2 was ranked very highly. Full proposals are due Oct. 6. We should know by Thanksgiving who gets the funding. So we are doing the fundraising as we speak. We don’t have to have all the money in hand, but we have to at least demonstrate we will be able to get matching funds. We have to show that we have commitments from a number of companies. I do believe that Cal-IT2 will be funded and that Institute will happen. And we will have even more opportunities for researchers to participate in the university and really get involved. The goal is to have the research in Cal-IT2 funded by and supported by industry, to have them participate in either contributing to or evaluating the research. With industry in general, we want to do more in the area of faculty recruiting. In particular, we’re trying to hire faculty in the industry growth clusters that are already here. So things like communications,networking, Internet infrastructure, software development, graphics for the entertainment industry, biomedical informatics. There are a lot of these clusters. One of the ways we’ve been cooperating with industries is to have industrial support for some of the faculty recruits,start-up packages for new UCI professors- so we’ve got several local companies to help out there.
You seem to see a lot of strengths in the local industry,funding, projects, enrollment. So what was the response to the recent Los Angeles Times article on the OC tech industry?
There’s a very vibrant economy in information technology, the telecommunications industry, and all those areas the article said were not growing. Various people have responded to that article. I would’ve responded with respect to the growth in computer science, which they led the reader to believe was not happening. It has grown substantially in enrollment and funding and all our numbers are way up over the last four or five years. They quoted declining enrollment in the high technology areas and in fact they rolled in biosciences, which has been decreasing and that brought the numbers down. If you count this year, we’ve more than doubled undergraduate numbers. We had 600 in 1995-1996 and now we’re at 1,350. We’ve been growing at about 20% a year.
Did the article have any direct effect on UCI?
I’ve had conversations with several of the CEOs affiliated with our department who know (what was reported is) not the case. But the bigger impact is on people who might read it and say, Why would I want to go to Orange County or locate in OC? The copy the Times put on its Web site has where they got the numbers. For one thing, in venture capital numbers, in the article they compared Orange County to Los Angeles County but when you look, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties were grouped together. So if you were to do the same thing for us and group Orange County, say, with San Diego County, it’s much more even. They did some funny things with their numbers.
What kinds of things are happening with teaching at UCI?
We are exploring the possibility of a joint graduate program with electrical and computer engineering in the area of networked systems,wireless, distributed systems, things of that sort. We already have people teaching courses in networking and they have people teaching so we’re actually trying to form a joint graduate program to leverage the resources in both units, and attract even more people to a broad experience and a new, emerging area. We’re also introducing courses in things like graphics. Biomedical informatics is a new area for us and we’ve hired two people in that area.
What about embedded computing?
It’s growing, and that’s why we have formed the Center for Embedded Computer Systems. It’s an interdisciplinary center for faculty members to explore embedded computer systems in products and environments. But the people have been here. It doesn’t offer a separate degree but there is a specialization in both the graduate and undergraduate degree programs. It’s a way of focusing research where UCI offers strength and expertise to the business community. We want to project an image for ICS that highlist some of our research themes. We will be recruiting researchers and faculty, researchers who aren’t necessarily faculty. Recruiting students. The goal is to have a center of research excellence in various areas, so that people recognize we’re doing good work.
Do you have anything like that now?
The Center for Embedded Systems is very well recognized, as well as the Institute for Software Research that I’m a member of. And, we have recently formed the Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics. Those things exist, and I think there will be others so we’re starting to look. Because our program is so broad, we can focus on areas where those lines intersect. Something like a digital home would require all these things we’ve been talking about. It’s something a good portion of our faculty can think about and focus on and participate in some way. And a lot of those are in areas of interest to businesses and our industrial partners.
With the PC Week mention, you are in the big leagues?
That has been one of the reasons the number and strength of our applicants has been what it has. This year, we have over 2,500 applicants, from which we chose about 500. This was double the number of applications from last year. This year, we were projecting 2,500 and I know we went over that. We are that strong. The Computing Research Association does national rankings for Ph.D. granting institutions (UCI was in the top 30). U.S. News and World Report does them, and the last time in U.S. News we were ranked 34 in computer science. I would like to see us go up to 25 in the next five years.
Where do your graduates go?
These days, bachelor’s degrees are very employable, given the IT worker shortage. I don’t have the numbers, but it’s very easy for our students to get very high-paying jobs,mid-$50,000 and up.
That affects the availability of faculty?
Yes, definitely. It affects it at all levels. A Ph.D. going out can make much more money in industry than in an academic job. To take an academic job, it has to be for the love of the job.
What’s your future commitment to UCI?
Five years as chair. Chairs get a term of three to five years and they can be renewed for another term. I have committed to do it for five years, and then we’ll see.
High-tech industry is becoming more involved in education. Have you ever thought of doing something in private industry?
Maybe at some point. I really enjoy teaching and I like the research that goes on. I’d probably be interested in a hybrid of some kind. In fact, Michael Pazzani, the previous chair of ICS, has a company he’s starting up at the research park.
Are you still teaching?
This year I’m not. Part of that is because I do the job of a dean, even though it’s not an official school. I sit on the dean’s council. I attend the meetings. I’m in charge of fundraising. I definitely will go back to teaching. But I don’t think I will this year because I’m just getting my bearings in this role.
