When I was in third grade, my brothers and I created a neon blue website in HTML, full of flashy rainbow animations, slow-loading pictures of our favorite things, and Comic Sans bold titles.
It was basically every web developer’s worst nightmare. But to me, it was the start of my journey into computer science and its amazing possibilities.
Since learning C++ in my freshman year of high school two years ago, my pursuit of technological knowledge had taken me to places I never would’ve thought possible. I participated in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics world championships in St. Louis as a student programmer. I was able to enter the halls of Stanford University, thanks to a full-ride scholarship from the Joyce Ivy Foundation, and learned Java and MATLAB as a summer college student. I dozed off in a sleeping bag at a tech incubator in San Francisco, while developing a web app to translate sign language to text during a hackathon. It was definitely an improvement from the website I built once upon a time.
However, I wanted to help other students feel the same adrenaline rush, the “eureka” moment when a program suddenly works. Specifically, I want to help other girls, since we are such an underrepresented minority in technology; according to the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT), only 18% of computer science graduates are female in 2013, an enormous decrease from the 37% in 1985.
Maybe the lack of women in computer science comes from the stereotype of a male programmer hacking the government in his parents’ basement. Maybe it’s because women like Margaret Hamilton (the lead software engineer for the Apollo landing) and Grace Hopper (rear Navy Admiral and inventor of the compiler) aren’t as popularized and mythologized as men like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Maybe it’s because of the still prevalent mindset that women shouldn’t be in engineering at all.
Whatever the reason, something needs to change to encourage more women into this exciting field. And what better incentives than a trip to Google and free food?
I started planning Hello World earlier this year, halfway through my junior year of high school at Utica Community Schools in Sterling Heights, Michigan. “Hello World” is often the first line programmers type out in any new language, so I thought it would be fitting for the middle school girls in my district who applied, most of whom have little to no experience in the field. I organized and planned every single detail, from the first team-building exercise to the farewell lunch. Through my professional network, made up of both local technology companies as well as global brands, I was able to secure in-kind and cash sponsorship from 3ViewsConsulting, cPanel Inc, Ford, Google, MCWT (Michigan Council of Women in Technology), Microsoft, and the University of Michigan’s Center for Engineering Diversity and Outreach.
During spring break, thirty students showed up at the Utica Center for Math, Science, and Technology, ready to code. I taught the girls how to complete projects in game design with Scratch, develop apps with MIT AppInventor, create robotics programs with Finches, and design websites with HTML/CSS. In addition to the daily projects, I hosted video conferences and speaker panels with women from the industry. On the last day, we toured Google Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan’s Engineering campus, where we got a real-life idea of where computer science can take us.
The passion amazed me. One girl wanted to skip lunch to code an autonomous program for her Finch robot. Another had saved her HTML and CSS files to a flash drive. She worked hours at home after the day camp to perfect it. When my robotics team wheeled in our giant 6-ft tall, 120-lb robot to demo, the girls kept lining up to drive and operate it, burning through three 12-Volt batteries in just an hour.
Throughout the week, the girls constantly gave me hope for the future of technology, showing everyone that girls are extraordinarily capable and intelligent to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Every day, they quickly moved past what I had planned. If anyone needed aid, my volunteers were ready — but the girls, mostly strangers from nine different schools and four different grades, helped and supported each other.
In a survey after the camp, I asked the girls if they may want to pursue computer science in the future: every single student responded with an enthusiastic YES!
To be honest, I was a nervous wreck before I started teaching. I had no idea what to expect. Would the girls even be interested in building a Flappy Bird game? Would they like the Jimmy John’s lunch? Plus, most of the girls were only a couple of years younger than me. I was terrified they’d find this camp, held when they could be relaxing at home, to be extremely boring. Public speaking wasn’t ever my forte, and even thinking about that small audience had scared me.
However, I remembered what my mentor, Aaron Willcock, who taught me most of what I know about robotics, had told me. “When I start to teach,” he had said, “I remember that if I’m afraid, I could miss the chance to change a life. But if I bear down to do it, I might help someone, even if it’s just one student. It’s worth the fear.”
As a result of Hello World, thirty more female high schoolers are interested in technology. That may sound like a small number, but it’s a start to breaking down barriers in this male-dominated field — and help more girls say hello to the world of computer science.
For more information about Hello World, visit the website.
