With its recently awarded $600,000 grant, the School of Engineering and Applied Science plans to raise interest in computer science through a new mentoring program.
The Broadening Participation in Computing grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation, allows the Engineering School to create what administrators call a “cascading” mentoring project that will launch this summer.
The service-learning course is unique in that professors will teach computational thinking skills to undergraduates, who will then teach high school students, who in turn will teach middle school students, said Yasmin Kafai, a professor in the Graduate School of Education.
At Penn, many computer science students get jobs at companies like Google and Apple, according to Computer and Information Science professor Jean Griffin. This mentoring program hopes to give the average Philadelphia student the opportunity to work toward these jobs.
Having a city of rising adults with computer skills will attract companies to Philadelphia, which in turn will help Philadelphia prosper and grow, Griffin said.
Undergraduates will also become involved with Boot-Up, a new two-week summer camp for high school students, said Susan Davidson, chairwoman of Computer and Information Science.
The middle school students will engage in both Scratch, a program in which students can create stories on the computer without having to write code and Computational Textiles, an activity in which students weave conductive threads into fabric to create clothing or jewelry, said Rita Powell, associate director of Computer and Information Science.
Even after the summer course ends, students will keep in touch with each other throughout the entire year. Undergraduates, for example, will be a part of a middle school after school activity.
Over the last few years, the number of people interested in the area of computer science has plateaued. Women make up only 30 percent of the Engineering School’s incoming class each year, according to Kafai. Minority representation is even lower.
“If students do not experience the computer science field in grades K-12, they may lack the background skills and knowledge that they need to pursue a career in the future,” Kafai explained.
The two students currently taking the service-learning course are helping develop some activities for the program and have already started working with middle school students, Davidson said.
The outcome of this program will be studied to see whether or not this model draws people to the field, Powell said. The idea is to teach students that computer science is a creative career that can take you in different directions.
“We are trying to help young people learn how to be inventors, not just consumers,” Griffin said.
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