Developing Student Leaders to Invent the Future
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
Theresa Dahlberg
UNC Charlotte
What is the future of computing professional? Students need to be good problem solvers, but problem solving needs to be domain specific. Future computing professional needs to be a computing leader. STARS Alliance’s mission is to foster computing community in higher education and extend it to K-12 institutions. Striving to show that computing is not just for people who have no social skills, encourage students to use computers, show social relevance of computing. Aim to instill STARS central values into computing: Technical excellence, civic engagement & service, community, leadership. Focus is on leadership as it provides active engagement, sustainability.
Tiffany Barnes
UNC Charlotte
Tiffany presented STARS leadership corps and projects at UNC: K-12 outreach programs, gamers alliance group at UNC, teaching 5th graders to use software to solve science problems, peer mentoring. Students’ feedback shows that the program is successful, more students want to pursue university education in computing.
Kristy Boyer
North Carolina State University
Kristy presented student research projects at NCSU: one group interested in AI mentored by a graduate student worked to figure out future of gaming in education, another group conducted research on how class size affects students’ learning. For STARS Corps they accepted at-risk students and helped them along with success. Students like being in Corps, it helps them to build stronger community, great addition to the resume, and they enjoy working with younger students.
Cheryl Seals
Auburn University
STARS at AU is involved in computer clubs, student motivation by coming to campus, talking to their parents, doing some game programming to promote student interest in computing.
Andrea Lawrence
Spelman College
STARTS at Spelman hold single gender camps (1 week for girls, 1 week for boys), geek weeks.
Mia Lustria
Florida State University
FSU STARS is a little different from others. First year they had 15 Corp members that started with a big STARS project (mentor 15 middle school students on different projects over 7 weeks). They hold computing careers night for high school students. One of the projects is to develop computer aided health intervention teaching safer sex to adolescents that has inspired all students involved in this project to go to graduate school.
Julie Strothman
Landmark College
STARS at Landmark College help students with learning disabilities who struggle with math and sciences. There are no computing classes on campus so STARS is one of the few opportunities to pursue computing for them. They have a usability lab that students use. One of the projects is looking at effect of distractions (pop ups) when reading that uses an eye tracker to track the attention of the reader. Another is exploring usability of on line math learning resources, redesigning and using them in community colleges where students have troubles with math courses.
Attending STARS students have presented some of the projects they are involved in. There were students involved in outreach programs for middle school students, gamers alliance program promoting diversity in computing, developing culturally situated design tools, careers in computing night promoting academic programs and careers in computing trying to encourage students to go into computer related areas.
Followup Discussion:
Questions: How often do you meet as a group?
Answer:
- There is a seminar course held once a week, some schools hold meetings with faculty staff once or twice a week, others every other week, depends on what they’re doing - outreach projects require more coordination than research.
- Members also start to meet outside the STARS projects and create social networks.