Only 24 percent of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs are held by women, and engineering is specifically a career underrepresented by females. To encourage more girls to explore engineering, Penn State’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering hosted a five-day camp, called Girls Coding the Future with Robots, for girls in grades 7-9 to introduce them to coding through the use of robots – both virtual and physical. Camp participants learned the fundamentals of computer programming and also about opportunities and careers available in computer science and engineering.
CSE Group Photo
Girls Coding the Future with Robots camp participants.
Robot Programming
Each day of the camp, participants learned new programming concepts and applied them to help robots achieve simple tasks such as navigating around a virtual room to reach a goal. Programming robots provides the opportunity to visualize the working of computer code and the difficulty of automating tasks that we take for granted.
Cue the Cleverbot in Action
Cue the Cleverbot in action.
John Hannan Assisting Camp Participants
John Hannan, associate department head of the Penn State Department of Computer Science and Engineering and camp director, was on hand to assist the camp participants with programming their robots.
Student Showcase
At the camp’s student showcase on July 20, which was a culmination of the week’s events, the girls demonstrated the robots they programmed themselves to their parents and family members.
