Donna Gavin, senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville has been accepted into the Amazon Future Engineer program for her work with the Girls Who Code Club.
The Amazon Future Engineer program is a “comprehensive childhood-to-career program to inspire, educate and train children and young adults from underserved schools and communities to pursue careers in computer science.”
This is Gavin’s second year of running Girls Who Code, a free, after-school program for girls in 6th to 12th grade. The program consists of about a dozen members who are learning the concepts of computer programming languages. The club is also mentored by six female computer science and software engineering students from UW-Platteville that are trained as College of Engineering, Mathematics and Science Ambassadors.
“The Future Engineer program provides a curriculum that has an Intro to Programming in Python, and it’s geared towards high school students. It’s meant to bridge the gap of high schools that might not necessarily have a computer science teacher with a curriculum,” said Gavin. “I see this tool as a year two curricula for some of our Girls Who Code Club who are more advanced – it provides quizzes, course content, exercises, tests, along with survey tools.”
The selection process to become sponsored involved several rounds starting with submitting the application followed by phone interviews with Amazon headquarters in Seattle, Washington. “It was a six or eight week waiting period between the time I filled out the form to the time they said, ‘yes, you’re eligible, and we are rewarding you with this,’” said Gavin. “I am piloting the Intro to Programming in Python course through 2020, and will have access to all the courses next year. For the 2020-21 school year, I will need to reapply to continue to use the curriculum.”
The program benefits the Girls Who Code club members as they advance in their education. “If these kids complete the Amazon Future Engineer program, they can be eligible to apply for scholarships for college. Once they’re in college, then the Amazon Future Engineer program makes internships available for them,” said Gavin.
“The internships would be in Seattle and California; it would be an Amazon internship and they would be eligible to apply. Then there are other scholarships for college students as well who participated in Amazon Future Engineer program,” said Gavin. “It really builds a pipeline of computer science students and tries to support them as they are moving forward.”
Excitement is already bubbling for the young programmers who tell Gavin that they inspire to be software engineers. “I hope that by bringing this curriculum to the Girls Who Code Club they’ll learn the basics of programming and build their self-confidence. Then, moving forward into high school and college, they will see a problem requiring computational thinking and say ‘I learned that doing the Amazon Future Engineering program.’