Girls Encoded motivates students to study CS

For the second year in a row, over 100 high school girls and their parents attended Girls Encoded, an all day event designed to educate and encourage girls to study computer science.  The event took place Saturday, April 9th and was co-directed by Prof. Rada Mihalcea, CSE research fellow Veronica Perez-Rosas, and CS student Lauren Molley.

The day consisted of hands-on activities, a panel discussion, and lab tours to show students the different aspects of CS. One hands-on activity, which was led by CSE student Cathy Finegan, required students to use MaKey MaKey, an invention kit, to make pianos using fruits and vegetables. The students also learned the basics of chatbot from CSE student Charlie Welch, created an electric circuit with help from Prof. Reetu Das, and learned about web development by CSE student Steve Wilson.

The panel discussion, organized by CSE graduate student Laura Wendlandt, consisted of four undergraduate students in CoE and LSA.

Both students and parents had the chance to tour several of our labs, including the the Language and Information Technologies lab, the ​Vision and Learning lab, the Intelligent Robotics Lab, and Lab 11.

The event was a perfect way to show students the impact of computer science.