A three-year pause in his undergraduate education made all the difference for Chris McFarland, who will wrap up his computer science requirements in August. “I don’t think any other institution would’ve allowed me to do that,” he said.

The young professor is using her dance background to explore how robots might better collaborate with humans in the future.

With women earning only 16 percent of computer science degrees and a huge shortfall between degrees and predicted workforce demand, Joanne McGrath Cohoon seeks to draw more high school girls into computing.