A dozen years or so ago, over 200 students were enrolled in the Computer Sciences Department at [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morehouse_College]Morehouse College [IMG]http://cacm.acm.org/images/icon.external-link.gif[/IMG][/URL]. Today, there are fewer than 150. Kenneth Perry sees that as symptomatic of a waning interest in computers as a career nationwide. But he suspects that the National Science Foundation's (NSF) efforts may be able to turn that around.

Perry is the chair of the Atlanta-based school's [URL=http://www.morehouse.edu/academics/comp/index.html]CS Department [IMG]http://cacm.acm.org/images/icon.external-link.gif[/IMG][/URL], currently just one of [URL=http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/progSearch.do?WT.si_n=ClickedAbstractsRecentAwards&WT.si_x=1&WT.si_cs=1&WT.z_pims_id=13510&SearchType=progSearch&page=2&QueryText=&ProgOrganization=CNS&ProgOfficer=&ProgEleCode=7482&BooleanElement=true&ProgRefCode=&BooleanRef=true&ProgProgram=&ProgFoaCode=&RestrictActive=on&Search=Search#results]over 100 institutions [IMG]http://cacm.acm.org/images/icon.external-link.gif[/IMG][/URL] participating in the NSF's five-year-old [URL=http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09534/nsf09534.html]Broadening Participation in Computing [IMG]http://cacm.acm.org/images/icon.external-link.gif[/IMG][/URL] program. ([URL="http://cacm.acm.org/news/7****-videogame-glitches-open-the-world-of-computing-to-students/fulltext"]MORE[/URL])