When Mickey Tran first attended the Department of Computer Science and Engineering’s summer Girl Scout camp, she was 16, entering her senior year of high school, and didn’t know much about coding. Through the camp, Tran had the opportunity to dive into app development, take a tour of Spreetail, and discover her future career path.
This summer, Tran returned to the camp as a sophomore CSE student, camp mentor and Spreetail intern.
“Honestly, without this camp, I don't think I would've chosen computer science as my major,” Tran said. “That first year of attending the camp helped me become more confident in my programming abilities. It showed me if I put the work and interest into it, I could do it.”
CSE hosted its third annual camp for the Girl Scouts of Nebraska last month. Every summer, the department invites the Girl Scouts to spend three days at the university studying computing with CSE faculty and student mentors.
In previous years, the camp’s learning activities have focused specifically on app development. This year, mentors from the CSE Ambassadors and Computing for All decided to expand the curriculum to also include activities like building paper circuits and programming LEGO robots.
Tyler Barker, a junior computer engineering major who co-planned this year’s camp, saw an opportunity to utilize the resources the CSE Ambassadors acquired through other mentoring initiatives to offer the Girl Scouts a more comprehensive learning experience.
“I think it provided a lot more mechanical thinking than in the past—kind of a computer engineering side,” Barker said. “I think it’s pretty important to understand early on, that if they want to enter into some field like this, what they’re actually getting into and what the overall concepts would be.”
