Coding&&Community

We are a group of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Rensselaer) students working to close the disparities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields by making computer science (CS) education more accessible to underrepresented minority students. We host weekly CS lessons, ‘hackathons’, and other workshops throughout the academic year. We created various CS curriculums that we teach to 10-20 STEP students every Saturday and up to 80 local students at our one day events. Among other things, our programs teach students to create interactive Python games, utilize advanced frameworks like Flask, build dynamic websites with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and explore the possibilities of Arduino. By the time a student has completed one of our programs, they will have created a final project and have it hosted on their own GitHub account. Aside from technical skills, we also help sharpen public speaking skills through project presentations where our students must clearly articulate their work and ideas to their fellow students or teammates. We strongly believe in ‘You cannot be what you cannot see’. We want to surround our students with role models they can look up to and create a supportive environment where they can learn things not currently taught in their classrooms. Some of our students have told us that our programs are their favorite part of their week!