UF-TYPE, a student-run organization at the University of Florida Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, has been awarded funding from Google’s igniteCS.
UF-TYPE (Teaching Youth Programming Essentials) is an outreach program of UF’s Women in Computer Science and Engineering (WiCSE). The UF-TYPE Initiative was started in Spring 2016 and is one of two programs managed by the Gainesville Women Coders group at UF.
“Winning this funding means a lot to this group because it will allow us to increase our impact on the high schools we are currently helping,” said Annie Luc, leader of TYPE.
The overall goal of UF-TYPE is to encourage people to learn programming and be interested in computer science. As part of that goal, the group has developed a curriculum to formally teach students coding principles. UF-TYPE has programs, which are held after school for about two hours, at four high schools in Gainesville, Fla.: Eastside High School, PK Yonge, F.W. Buchholz High School and Gainesville High School. The igniteCS award is specifically for use with programs at PK Yonge.
UF-TYPE is geared toward all students, but the group tries to encourage women and underrepresented groups to be a part of the club. The team only works with high schools but hopes to expand to middle schools and other high schools in the future.
Luc said the group wants to “purchase coding robots for the students so that they can see the physical impact of programming.” Luc hopes the group will be able to use the funding for other schools.
“With this funding,” she said, “we will be able to get each school a set of robots to use.”
The idea behind igniteCS is that it “provides funding and resources for groups of college and university students to make a difference in their local communities through CS mentorship.” This is a one-time gift from Google on behalf of the igniteCS program.
For more information about Google’s program, visit the igniteCS website.
Allison Logan
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering