The Aggie Coding Club (ACC) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University is a student organization bringing together like-minded individuals to create a center for pursuing software based projects as well as networking with companies and individuals.
Founded in 2015, ACC provides students the opportunity to explore their careers and passions through project development. Students sign up for project ideas that interest them and groups are naturally formed to execute each project. Members are currently working on projects such as creating analytics for the application GroupME, and developing an application to track events around campus.
The organization was established by computer science junior, Michael McKenna. Officers include Rohit Mucherla, president; Colton Weaver, vice president; Marcus Heinonen, officer of operations; William O’Rosky, officer of communication; and Liam Moran, officer of project management. Dr. Aakash Tyagi, professor of practice, has served as the advisor for the organization since its inception.
“It is a really rewarding experience to see how motivated students are to work on projects that the club offers,” Mucherla said. “Not only does it teach me a lot about how I can help students pursue their interests but it also teaches me what kinds of opportunities we as a club should bring to our members. It’s extremely exciting to see the dedication and hard work our members have put into these projects and we hope to continue providing more opportunities for our members.”
The group is hoping to kick off a mini mentoring program at the start of next semester to better help freshman students in general engineering.
“Quite recently, I started a new initiative to unify software development organizations across Texas and hopefully, down the road across the nation,” Mucherla said. “The goal of this is to potentially start projects that are collaborative across the universities involved. We’ve reached out to nearly all the major Texas schools such as the University of Texas at Austin, Baylor University, Rice University, University of Houston and a couple others! Texas Tech University is already on board with us to expand our reach and build the network.”
Several companies, including Microsoft, IBM, General Motors, National Instruments, AVIO Consulting, Improving Enterprises and Anadarko have visited the organization and given presentations about their companies, technical computer science topics, and internship and career advice.
ACC fosters a level of learning that is not typically found within the traditional classroom setting. With students who come from diverse set of majors from business to hard sciences, one of the group’s core beliefs is that anyone, regardless of skill level, background, or education can learn how to code. ACC allows students to network with other members and with industry affiliates, while also gaining valuable coding experienc