On Saturday, November 9, 2024, 75 high-school students and 31 chaperones gathered in Aggieland for Computer Science (CS) Day to learn about computer science and its reach. The event was hosted by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
During the six-hour event, students attended talks and participated in hands-on activities and demonstrations including a robot petting zoo and a driving simulation where they could see how AI-driven cars view the world in 3D. They also learned about opportunities to study computer science at Texas A&M University.
The group included ninth through twelfth graders from 15 Texas high schools. Presenters were primarily faculty and students from the computer science and engineering department, though faculty from several other departments were also involved.
“The thing I thought was really great was the kids were seeing the kind of the breadth, at least a taste of the breadth, of the reach of computer science,” said David Rice ’93, a CS Day donor and former student. “Computer science is everywhere and in everything, so there is no human industry or undertaking that you can't get involved in if you're creative.”
In Raspberry Pycraft, one of the most popular sessions, students used Raspberry Pi 400s—small, customizable computers—and the programming language Python to build things in the Pi version of the videogame Minecraft. Dr. Philip Ritchey, instructional associate professor, led the session and provided the students with some starter code.
“Instead of building by hand by placing blocks with the mouse, I challenged them to write code to place the blocks,” Ritchey said. The students’ creativity came through as they used code to build a unicorn and a portal they could use to teleport players.
Computer science is everywhere and in everything, so there is no human industry or undertaking that you can't get involved in if you're creative.
Members of the computer science department’s Broadening Participation in Computing Committee, who were responsible for the event, were pleased with the outcome of CS Day. Shawn Lupoli, instructional assistant professor, was in charge of CS Day registration and logistics. He described CS Day as an all-hands-on-deck type of event involving computer science staff, faculty, and students.
“This was a wonderful team effort, which is what made CS Day great,” Lupoli said. “There were a couple of new people in the department. They all jumped in, and I needed every single one of them. There was not one person that was not important when it came to staffing this event and making it successful.”
Dr. Nate Veldt, assistant professor, agreed with Lupoli and expanded upon CS Day being a team effort. Veldt was in charge of finding volunteers and creating the schedule, a puzzle fit for a computer scientist.
“The schedule was actually a fairly involved mathematical optimization problem, just to figure out who can go where,” Veldt said. “It was kind of fun, actually.”
Veldt assigned small groups of students and their chaperones to ten different tracks that dictated how they would move through sessions.
“One thing that made my job easier was that we had great participation from faculty in our department and other departments,” Veldt said. “Sometimes you worry that there’s not even going to be a solution to such a scheduling problem, but because our faculty were so willing, and so many people volunteered to give excellent talks and activities, I never had to worry that we would have enough activities to fill the sessions for the students.”
This was the second time the computer science and engineering department put on CS Day—the first was in the spring of 2022. The Broadening Participation in Computing Committee plans to continue offering CS Day every fall. Dr. Paula deWitte, professor of practice in computer science and engineering and chair of the committee, was optimistic about the potential for CS Day to have a positive influence on the participants.
“We may never know the true impact of reaching these high school students,” deWitte said. “However, those on the committee were enthusiastic about the event’s success and their interactions with the high school students.”
CS day was free for all participants, and lunch was provided for the students and their chaperones. Members of the Broadening Participation in Computing Committee are Chair Dr. Paula deWitte, Shawn Lupoli, Dr. Shinjiro Sueda, Dr. David Kebo Houngninou, Doug Hawley, Dr. Guni Sharon, Dr. Nate Veldt, Dr. Philip Ritchey, Beverly Joseph and Kathy Waskom.