UCS junior hopes younger students say "Hello" to the world of computer science

A Utica Community Schools junior is hoping that younger students will say “Hello” to the world of computer science at a spring break camp.

Through her own initiative, Christina Li has created a week-long computer science day camp geared toward junior high girls called “Hello, World.”

“The benefit for the students would be the exposure to various fields in computer science, opportunities to talk to Google engineers and other professionals and the mentorship of an entire team made up of UCS teachers, industry professionals and college students,” Li said.

The camp will take place April 6 through 10 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Instructional Resource Center, 14201 Canal Road, Sterling Heights 48313.

During the week, Li will teach students web development, app design (MIT AppInventor), game design (Scratch), robotics (Finches), and basic scripting languages (Python on Codecademy). In addition, female professionals in the will participate through video conferences to discuss their experiences in CS, including women from Google, SpaceX, and Apple.

Li, who attends Stevenson High School and Utica Center for Mathematics, Science and Technology, created the camp after she visited Silicon Valley in California through a Stanford University study program sponsored by the Joyce Ivy Foundation.

“When I was at Silicon Valley during the summer, the gender gap in computer science really hit me,” she said. “In a world that’s growing more and more dependent on technology, it doesn’t seem right that the voice of half the population is underrepresented. I want to change that.”

To register for the camp, please visit http://tina98.github.io/HelloWorld/.