On May 3, the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) student winners as well as science teacher Tim Barron attended the Awards reception at the Connecticut Convention Center.

Barron was awarded with the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Educator Award, which publicly celebrates educators who encourage high school women’s interest and participation in technology pursuits. Educator Award recipients form a national community of peers, share practices and empower other educators to encourage the participation of women in computing.

“I feel very proud to be honored with the NCWIT Educator Award, and I am lucky to work in a school system which has supported my efforts to encourage more girls to try computing classes,” Barron said.

Barron has been a teacher in computing at the high school for 18 years and currently teaches four different courses. In addition to being a teacher, Barron is also a co-coach for the high school robotics team.

According to Barron, he hopes that one day, this course will move down to the middle school level where he believes it will capture the attention of an even more diverse range of students including more girls who are open to giving Computer Science a try.

“Congratulations to Tim Barron for this very well deserved recognition of his efforts to promote and encourage young women to pursue their interests in computing, engineering and robotics. Thanks to Tim, Farmington High School female students have regularly received the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. I commend Tim for this important and noteworthy accomplishment,” Principal Bill Silva said.

In addition to having an impact on the environment of the high school, students have also benefitted from the efforts Barron have put in to the program.

“I’m proud that Mr. Barron has won this award since he always works in helping women in the school pursue STEM careers and how I have learned so much from him through his mentoring on the robotics team and in his computer science class,” senior Kirsten Hart said.

In the future, Barron hopes to see the numbers of girls taking computing and engineering classes at the high school continue to grow to approach or surpass a 50 to 50 ratio of boys to girls.

“I hope that eventually it will be so commonplace for women to work in computing that efforts such as those by NCWIT will no longer need to be a ‘thing’,” Barron said.