Auburn computer program draws women.(News Watch)

Careers in computer science and technology pay more, offer long-term employability and help provide human resources for new inventions and technological break-throughs. But they include few women and minorities.

Auburn University AL is one of a handful of schools designing programs to attract and retain women and minorities, led by Juan Gilbert, director of the school's Human-Centered Computing Lab.

Although women are more than 57% of college students, they are less than 20% of computer science graduates and 14% of faculty. At Auburn, women are 43% of computer science PhD candidates.

And less than 1% of the computer science faculty is black, a figure that Auburn is changing. Auburn has eight black computer science doctoral students, 5% of the nation's total. Nationally, in the last five years 57 blacks earned doctorates in computer science from Auburn, and five of them graduated from Auburn.

In fact, the National Science Foundation approved a $1 million, four-year grant to study Auburn's success at bringing women and minorities to computer science, and to design a strategy to duplicate its success elsewhere.

"If all of our technology is created by the same people, then our solutions will be limited and they will serve only those people," Gilbert said. "Diversity is the key. Diverse backgrounds yield ...