WICS is committed to helping students learn about computing. To this end, Outreach Committee continues to create curriculum and gather resources geared towards encouraging underrepresented minorities to explore STEM. We host both day-long and multi-day workshops (Hour of Code, AspireIT) for middle school girls and lead various programs for K-12 and college students.
We have been awarded the following grants from Google and the National Center for Women and Information (NCWIT) to support and lead the respective outreach programs:
- AspireIT ($3000 from NCWIT) funds a series of app development workshops using AppInventor to introduce middle school students to computing. WICS collaborated with the Girls Who Code Club of Woodbridge High School.
- Years awarded: 2015−2016, 2016−2017, 2017−2018
- IgniteCS ($8790 from Google) funds a third year of our high school program, where we host workshops to educate girls about ICS and career paths and to introduce them to programming and building progress
- Years awarded: 2013−2014, 2014−2015, 2016−2017
- Trailblazer Award ($15,000 from NCWIT & Google.org) funds a new program, ExploreICS, for Undergraduate/Undeclared students to show them what ICS is, what careers are possible, and what are the different majors and minors in the Donald Bren School of ICS.
- Years awarded: 2016−2017