Page 34 - Flathead Beacon // 10.5.16

TRANSACTIONS 35 BUSINESS IS PERSONAL 36 Business
WBY MOLLY PRIDDY OF THE BEACON
HEN MARIANNE SMITH WAS
learning the language of com-
puter coding in college, it required a bag to hold all the punch cards
needed to tell the computer what to do. It was a sign of the times – from the time people started coding computers up until the mid-1980s, most program- mers used punch cards to keep track of their programs, line by line. To edit a pro- gram, the cards were reorganized, edited, removed, replaced, and backed up by a second deck or written to magnetic tape. “That wasn’t too fun,” Smith said, recalling how an ill-timed slip or fall could result in all the cards scattering
willy-nilly to the oor.
Learning to code was part of her edu- cation to become an industrial engineer, a profession that had almost no women in it when Smith was working for NASA or Lockheed Martin.
“When I was rst hired, they asked if I was going to get pregnant. I had to dress like a man, look like a man, even though I was being paid less,” Smith said.
She was told the men had wives and families to provide for, so it made sense that they should earn more than she did for the same work.
“Things aren’t that way anymore,” Smith said. “You can be yourself.”
In that spirit, Smith has volunteered to start up Kalispell’s branch of Montana Code Girls, an o shoot of Big Sky Code Academy seeking to connect girls and
young women with technology. Starting Oct. 6, there will be free coding classes for girls ages 9 to 19, every Thursday at Sykes Diner. The class will tie together coding and entrepreneurship opportunities.
Montana Code Girls’ mission is to empower girls’ interest in science, tech- nology, engineering, and math, abbrevi- ated as STEM. Many of the local schools have begun integrating coding and com- puter languages into their curriculum, but are still having some trouble attract- ing girls to the classes.
Devin Holmes, who founded Mon- tana Code Girls with his wife Christine, said the idea started after the couple saw the documentary “Code Girl,” tracking teams competing in app creation. They screened it in Missoula and Bozeman,
Marianne Smith explains plans for Montana Code Girls.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
and parents approached them about the classes.
“So we said, ‘Yeah, sure, we’ll create the program,’” Holmes said. “We want to get young girls in the age range of 9 to 19 interested in technology, in this case soft- ware, and start to demystify technology and create an environment where they can learn without social peer pressure.”
An eight-week pilot of the program showed promise, and Montana Code Girls starts in Kalispell, Helena, Great Falls, and Bozeman this fall.
STEM education has to start early in order to battle the social ideas that girls shouldn’t be in these professions, Smith said.
“I do think that once girls hit mid- dle school, especially the end of middle
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OCTOBER 5, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM