Celebrating Women in Computing – Sister Mary Kenneth Keller #SheIsWhyICode

SIGUCCS Commuity

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller (1913-1985)

An American Roman Catholic nun, she was the first woman to earn a PhD in computer science (1965, University of Wisconsin-Madison) in the United States. During her graduate studies, she worked with the National Science foundation workshop in Computer Science at Dartmouth College (all male at the time) and participated in the implementation of the BASIC programming language. She later went on to found the computer science department at Clarke College (now University) and directed the department for twenty years.

note sheet

At the ACM/SIGUCC User Services Conference in 1975, Keller declared “we have not fully used a computer as the greatest interdisciplinary tool that has been invented to date.” (How cool is that?? She was at our conference!)

Why do you Code? Share your inspirational stories on our Facebook community page or Twitter. Be sure to include the tags #SIGUCCS and #SheIsWhyICode

About SIGUCCS Editor

The Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) is an association of professionals who support and manage the diverse aspects of information technology services at higher education institutions. SIGUCCS is one of 36 special interest groups of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. SIGUCCS focuses on issues surrounding the support, delivery, and management of those services, and provides professional development opportunities for its members and the other individuals in the field.