Our Microsoft Award winners:
An example of our outreach activities:
Course Overview: CS193 is a class for everyone who can use a computer that wants to make a difference and have a positive impact on the lives of others in our community. To this end, we have formed a number of partnerships with local non-profits and area high-schools (see the list below) to enable us to help them with their efforts as part of the UCSB educational process. This class will enable UCSB students (in groups consisting of students of different backgrounds and expertise levels), to work with these local organizations to improve their access to and use of information technology. Computers have tremendous potential for improving our lives -- our goal with this class is to bring this potential to fruition in our community.
We encourage students of all skill levels and majors to participate (from those just simply comfortable with a computer and basic Windows software, to operating system and programming aces) -- as there are many ways to help our partners. You will have opportunties to learn from, teach, mentor, and help others with information technology at many different levels.
Course Goals: Our goal is to help our community and to teach you valuable skills that you can use to build bridges to successful careers. Employers and graduate schools look for your potential to contribute to the world and community. This is an ideal way to gain the experience you need. Moreover, CS193 will give you the opportunity to participate and share in the changing role of the Computer Scientist: Discover how exciting and impactful CS can be and encourage others to consider getting CS degrees.
Course Expectations: For this class, you will identify a group of 3-4 students and a non-profit or local Santa Barbara High School with which you are interested in working. We will help you with both. Our current non-profit partners are listed below. You will be expected to attend the class (1 evening a week) and to work with your non-profit or high-school group 2-4 hours per week throughout the quarter (even when you get busy with other classes). Each group will also be expected to keep a weekly journal of their efforts, interactions, and contributions which we will discuss as part of class.
Course Projects: The non-profits are interested in two types of projects: Those that focus on the technology used by the non-profit for administration purposes and those that bring interesting technological advances to the constituents of the non-profits. There are many ways to contribute, for example, you can assess the current hardware and software in use and offer suggestions and implementations for improvements; you can teach the employees of the non-profits how to make the most of their systems (how to use new or existing software, how to make their systems more secure and reliable, etc); or you can identify interesting ways to use existing or new technology to improve the lives of non-profit volunteers and employees and their constituents.
For the high-school groups, you may help with tutoring students, improving or assessing the software used by the school, or help communicate to high-school students what the various opportunities are for them if they consider computer science as a career option.
Course Implementation: We will meet each week as a class. Class meetings will consist of
- Presentations by a subset of our non-profit partners to discuss potential projects and opportunities.
- Lectures by Chandra on topics related to outreach, information technology, Microsoft software, and working with non-profit and high-school organizations.
- Group discussions as to the progress of each group and the issues or problems (and working solutions!) they have.
- Guest lectures by Industry leaders and other professors on the impact potential of computer science on our future and on the importance of increasing and broadening participation in the field.
